This is it, folks – the one that people have been panting for since Impulse Pictures announced its line of Nikkatsu roman porno films so many years ago. There are some truly astounding and outrageous films in the studio’s catalog, but there’s nothing else quite like White Rose Campus, or to go by its more notorious complete translated title, White Rose Campus: Then Everybody Gets Raped.

If you didn’t guess from that title already, this is not a film for the politically correct. Or the easily offended. Or your grandmother. Or your next door neighbors. Or probably even your pets. So here we have the unforgettable saga of a bus loaded up with 35 young Japanese schoolgirls heading out for an afternoon trip to a finishing school, White Rose Academy. Though all clad in identical uniforms, they naturally range from demure virgins to raging nymphomaniacs and every sexual spectrum in between -- with a prim, bespectacled young teacher overseeing them and leading some perky sing-alongs about farm animals. The trip starts off on a foul note when a perverted gas station attendant gets his hand on a used tampon for some recreational use in the men's room, but that's just the beginning. Faster than you can say Cheerleaders' Wild Weekend, they end up being busjacked by a trio of gun-toting hoodlums who decide to cherry pick the prettiest girls and leave the rest out on the road. What follows is a cavalcade of abuse and degradation that seems to go on for hours, with no bodily fluid or tampon off limits. Meanwhile some other guys come upon the rest of the girls and decide to give chase, leading to a violent finale and the obligatory twist ending.

Regular Nikkatsu helmer Kôyû Ohara was no stranger to insane material like this with titles like Zoom Up: Rape Site, Wet & Rope, Fairy in a Cage, and the stunning Female Prisoner 101: Suck under his belt.  However, this one takes things to a whole new level that comes off like an extreme absurdist comedy at times, with the entire human race in general coming off poorly by the end rather than the straightforward misogyny you might expect. Impulse brings this one to DVD for its official English-friendly debut looking pretty solid, obviously from a master that was prepped a few years ago but still better than anything we've had before. As usual, optical fogging is (sometimes hilariously) baked into the original film to obscure frontal nudity, often implying things far worse than what the actors were actually doing. The optional English subtitles are, as you'd expect, full of incredible dialogue you'll never hear spoken aloud in mixed company. The sole extra is the theatrical trailer, which will teach you how to translate terms like "Feature Length Sex Mania" into Japanese.

It would be very, very difficult to top that one for sheer shock value, and as usual, Impulse has released this one in tandem with another Nikkatsu softcore title that doesn't even try. Another in the peculiar vein of Japanese nunsploitation films, Nun Story: Frustration in Black is the usual drill about guilt-ridden, self-flagellating holy sisters who spend their days tilling the fields and their evenings plowing everything else. The latest arrival is young and innocent Yukio, who is christened Sister Maria. When the abbess falls ill and can't oversee the women busy pleasuring themselves alone at night, the new Sister Sara is brought in only for additional hell to break loose when Maria ends up getting raped (twice) and all of the convent's dark secrets, some involving hooded figures doing kinky stuff with chains and candle wax, to slowly come to light.

Filled with the usual exploitable elements you'd expect including a lot more bondage than usual for this subgenre, this is a perfectly competent and entertaining little entry in the cycle even if director Nobuaki Shirai (who directed a lot of other lower tier pink films) doesn't seem all that interested in investing it with more than the required level of visual style. Again the Impulse DVD (bare bones) is the first time this has appeared in an English-subtitled edition, and definitely note the disclaimer about the quality; it's been pulled from a very old VHS-ish master with some visible crosstakl, a bit of squeezing, and cropping of the original 2.35:1 framing down to about 2.00:1. Basically it's the weakest looking of the Nikkatsu batch along with Suck, but fans will want it anyway because, well, it's still nuts.

Reviewed on August 23, 2018