Japanese film maker Katsuya Matsumura is responsible for this extreme trilogy, All Night Long, that is highly controversial in Japan (and elsewhere where it's known) and only the first film, All Night Long (1992), managed to get a theatrical release, the sequels, All Night Long 2: Atrocity (1994) and All Night Long 3: The Final Atrocity (1996), were denied a theatrical release and so they received only a video market distribution of some kind.
This third entry is a little different from the first two films and concentrates on a disturbed teenager who works on some kind of a sex hotel in which customers visit with their sex companions, spend a steamy night together and then leave the room filled with used condoms and other filth around the place. This protagonist works there with another male and a slightly elder female who all are not as balanced human beings as they could. He collects pubic hair from the sheets and practises other similar anti-social things. Soon the boy starts to get obsessed with a girl that lives near and he starts to collect her trash and leftover food and everything possible. He becomes obsessed with trash bags and collects them to his room, bathing in filth, literally and eating (the girl's) garbage and making nice collections of her sanitary towels and so on. It is easy to get the picture by now, and the film really is as outrageous in its imagery and hard to take (to say the least) as it sounds. Welcome to the origins of living, sorry filth, the truth about our very selves, but in a very extreme and merciless way without too much hope for a better world anymore.
The film is as horrible as just possible, without any signs of humanity or purity left. The first film had that one female character, the second film had also at least one (albeit a very unbalanced and disturbed one after strong sexual humiliation etc.), but this third film is practically completely without those elements of hope. There are only bad, selfish, mean spirited and evil characters here who only try to keep on living by satisfying their instincts for carnal pleasure, humiliation and violence, all of which are usually practised together. The imagery and scenes are so dirty and depressing it really requires an "experienced" non-mainstream cinema viewer to be able to handle it, I would say according to what I felt when watching this. That is also among the film's negative things as it would have needed, like part 2, at least one ray of light among its characters, but, like the previous film, these sequels work better if they are watched as if they were connected to the first film straightly.
This third film is also the "smallest" in the series, taking place in the mysterious apartment/dumping ground environment where the half dead characters scrape their precarious living. The second was slightly better as it had those images of real life atrocities and terror, but the "largest" is easily the first film which takes place in a familiar society with its schools and other elements found everywhere where humans live. Still part 3 has many scenes of products of industrialism (like military aeroplanes and so on) which Matsumura shows a lot so he definitely tries to achieve bigger waters with this film, too, which is of course good for the film.
There are some great lines that crystallize the themes of this series in each film, alongside the greatest power in Japanese cinema, the silence which is used (fortunately) in Matsumura's work, too. In part 2, a character says "if there wasn't sex, you people would be nothing" and that goes very well with part 3, too, as the film is set in the hotel of sexual desire and voyeurism. It is really the only thing these people have in their miserable lives as it is one of the primary instincts in our nature. Another great line comes from this part 3 which suggests that humans are born half dead, growing up until they finally become completely dead. Humans are living garbage, nothing else. Matsumura must be the most pessimistic and misanthropic film maker ever and that's why his honest, argumented and feared work is so great even with its few flaws.
Otherwise part 3 has one rather negative side and it is its slow pace and a lack of a "hook" at the beginning to really grab the attention of the viewer. Now the 82 NTSC minutes piece feels awfully too long especially as the first 45 minutes or so of the film is so calm and full of silent images. There would have been something to make it very interesting from the very beginning and also some cuts to the more unnecessary parts would have been welcome. Also the bullied school girl character remains a mystery: why can't she fight back and try to survive from the hell her school mates have created around her? I would also like to ask why the lead character becomes so obsessed with the filthy white trash bags in the first place, so the characters in this third All Night Long film are easily the weakest ones.
This is an expected ending to the disturbing trilogy. It has perhaps more shocking and graphic violence at some parts, but overall is equally nihilistic and horribly disturbing with the previous films, especially part 2. This is the kind of cinema that don't get made too often or in too many territories, Japan being usually the bravest one. All Night Long is probably the darkest film trilogy ever made anywhere, and it is great it has a rather talented and visionary maker behind it so that it achieves a lot more than an average exploitation director, with no ambition, from the same script would have achieved. Enter if you dare to see the harrowing truth and vision of ugliest kind. 5/10
This third entry is a little different from the first two films and concentrates on a disturbed teenager who works on some kind of a sex hotel in which customers visit with their sex companions, spend a steamy night together and then leave the room filled with used condoms and other filth around the place. This protagonist works there with another male and a slightly elder female who all are not as balanced human beings as they could. He collects pubic hair from the sheets and practises other similar anti-social things. Soon the boy starts to get obsessed with a girl that lives near and he starts to collect her trash and leftover food and everything possible. He becomes obsessed with trash bags and collects them to his room, bathing in filth, literally and eating (the girl's) garbage and making nice collections of her sanitary towels and so on. It is easy to get the picture by now, and the film really is as outrageous in its imagery and hard to take (to say the least) as it sounds. Welcome to the origins of living, sorry filth, the truth about our very selves, but in a very extreme and merciless way without too much hope for a better world anymore.
The film is as horrible as just possible, without any signs of humanity or purity left. The first film had that one female character, the second film had also at least one (albeit a very unbalanced and disturbed one after strong sexual humiliation etc.), but this third film is practically completely without those elements of hope. There are only bad, selfish, mean spirited and evil characters here who only try to keep on living by satisfying their instincts for carnal pleasure, humiliation and violence, all of which are usually practised together. The imagery and scenes are so dirty and depressing it really requires an "experienced" non-mainstream cinema viewer to be able to handle it, I would say according to what I felt when watching this. That is also among the film's negative things as it would have needed, like part 2, at least one ray of light among its characters, but, like the previous film, these sequels work better if they are watched as if they were connected to the first film straightly.
This third film is also the "smallest" in the series, taking place in the mysterious apartment/dumping ground environment where the half dead characters scrape their precarious living. The second was slightly better as it had those images of real life atrocities and terror, but the "largest" is easily the first film which takes place in a familiar society with its schools and other elements found everywhere where humans live. Still part 3 has many scenes of products of industrialism (like military aeroplanes and so on) which Matsumura shows a lot so he definitely tries to achieve bigger waters with this film, too, which is of course good for the film.
There are some great lines that crystallize the themes of this series in each film, alongside the greatest power in Japanese cinema, the silence which is used (fortunately) in Matsumura's work, too. In part 2, a character says "if there wasn't sex, you people would be nothing" and that goes very well with part 3, too, as the film is set in the hotel of sexual desire and voyeurism. It is really the only thing these people have in their miserable lives as it is one of the primary instincts in our nature. Another great line comes from this part 3 which suggests that humans are born half dead, growing up until they finally become completely dead. Humans are living garbage, nothing else. Matsumura must be the most pessimistic and misanthropic film maker ever and that's why his honest, argumented and feared work is so great even with its few flaws.
Otherwise part 3 has one rather negative side and it is its slow pace and a lack of a "hook" at the beginning to really grab the attention of the viewer. Now the 82 NTSC minutes piece feels awfully too long especially as the first 45 minutes or so of the film is so calm and full of silent images. There would have been something to make it very interesting from the very beginning and also some cuts to the more unnecessary parts would have been welcome. Also the bullied school girl character remains a mystery: why can't she fight back and try to survive from the hell her school mates have created around her? I would also like to ask why the lead character becomes so obsessed with the filthy white trash bags in the first place, so the characters in this third All Night Long film are easily the weakest ones.
This is an expected ending to the disturbing trilogy. It has perhaps more shocking and graphic violence at some parts, but overall is equally nihilistic and horribly disturbing with the previous films, especially part 2. This is the kind of cinema that don't get made too often or in too many territories, Japan being usually the bravest one. All Night Long is probably the darkest film trilogy ever made anywhere, and it is great it has a rather talented and visionary maker behind it so that it achieves a lot more than an average exploitation director, with no ambition, from the same script would have achieved. Enter if you dare to see the harrowing truth and vision of ugliest kind. 5/10
