Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Aug 27, 2025
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Director
Atsushi YamatoyaRelease Date(s)
1967 (April 29, 2025)Studio(s)
Yamatoya Productions (Deaf Crocodile Films)- Film/Program Grade: B-
- Video Grade: B
- Audio Grade: B-
- Extras Grade: B+
Review
[Editor's Note: To avoid confusion, take note that we’re using the Standard Edition artwork for this review instead of the Deluxe Limited Edition artwork.]
Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands: no doubt you have questions. Fair enough, but just be prepared for the fact that the answers may raise even more questions.
As the title clearly indicates, Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands defies easy explanation. It was a part of the pinku eiga or “pink film” genre in Japan, which were softcore exploitation films that sometimes veered into “roughie” territory by including rape and sexual abuse (albeit simulated). They were shot on 35mm film but produced on a shoestring, and as long as the necessary exploitation elements were included (and didn’t go beyond what Japanese censorship standards would allow), there were no real restrictions on what filmmakers could do. From a storytelling perspective, the sky was the limit. Enter Branded to Kill co-screenwriter Atsushi Yamatoya, a person for whom even the sky was too limiting. As writer and director of Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands, he crafted something else entirely. It’s like a widescreen Doris Wishman roughie that was directed by David Lynch and written by Quentin Tarantino—a Dada version of An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. Yet even that’s selling it short. Literary critic Harold Bloom described Shakespeare’s Hamlet as being a “Poem Unlimited,” and if that’s true, then Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands is a Film Unlimited.
Starting with that title, of course. The Japanese title Kōya no Datchi Waifu actually translates into something more like Dutch Wife of the Wastelands, but since “Dutch wife” can be a euphemism for a sex doll (inflatable or otherwise), Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands makes more sense in English. Or as much sense as anything in the film can actually make, anyway. Yamatoya wasn’t interested in straightforward narratives or in any kind of easily digestible narrative structures, either, so the impenetrable title is only the beginning of the verbal, aural, and visual games that he plays in the film. As a result, summarizing the story can be a fool’s errand, but in its broadest strokes, Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands is about Shō (Yūichi Minato), a hitman who has been hired by a businessman named Naka (Masayoshi Nogami). Naka wants Shō to eliminate a group of Yakuza who have kidnapped, raped, and tortured his mistress Sae (Noriko Tatsumi), all while filming the brutal experience in order to mentally torture Naka and Sae’s father. Shō discovers to his horror that the Yakuza are led by his old nemesis Kō (Shōhei Yamamoto), a man who was previously responsible for the rape and murder of Shō’s girlfriend. So, Shō does everything that he can to turn the tables on him, but Kō’s own girlfriend Mina (Miki Watari) turns the tables on Shō instead, bringing him back to where it all began—or ended, as the case may be.
While it would have been possible to turn that basic narrative outline into a fairly straightforward rape/revenge gangster drama (with the requisite nudity and simulated sex, of course), Yamatoya wasn’t interested in straightforward narratives. Instead, like Billy Pilgrim in Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, Shō has become unstuck in time, with the events in the film unfolding in nonlinear fashion. Past, present, and possible futures intermingle freely, not just in terms of how each scene is connected, but also within any given scene on its own. Even the epilogue actually precedes the prologue (something that might not be obvious on a first viewing). It’s all completely disorienting, and in the same way that Yōsuke Yamashita’s atonal free jazz score for the film lacks any melodic or harmonic center, Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands lacks a narrative center.
Still, Yamatoya peppered the film with clues to help put all of the seemingly disconnected pieces together, although fair warning: he leaves plenty of room for interpretation. Unlike Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown (or even Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing), the puzzle pieces in Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands can be assembled in different ways to provide slightly different pictures of what has really happened. Yet Yamatoya does provide something of a road map. Ambrose Bierce had used repetition at the beginning and end of An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge in order to anchor what happened in between, and while Yamatoya does something similar (albeit with an extra nonlinear twist), he uses repetition throughout Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands to provide anchor points for his story. Images of telephones, flies, and clocks stuck at 3:00 are repeated at key points in the narrative, and they’re always significant. They offer a through line that helps keep the unstable center of the film as stable as possible.
“Stable” is a relative term, however, because Yamatoya wasn’t particularly interested in stability. Despite having those anchor points, he still threw in every visual and aural trick in the book in order to keep viewers disoriented, from odd camera angles and framing to Richard Lester style jump cutting. He also freely violated spatial relationships, letting the distance between characters shift dramatically between individual shots. He even seems to have hand-painted out parts of the film frame to make a tossed cigarette appear to blink in and out of existence. All that, plus theatrically staged tableaus and Police Squad style fake freeze frames that threaten to break the fourth wall. If Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands really does have an unstable center, Yamatoya’s unrestrained cinematic experimentation means that the center won’t hold. He wasn’t as interested in interpretations as he was in the experiences that led to them, and Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands is an experience like no other. It’s rough, raw, and even amateurish in some respects, but it’s also a striking example of the limitless possibilities of the film medium—it’s essentially the Un Chien Andalou of pinku eiga, with all that entails. Once seen, it can’t be unseen, and the questions will never end.
Cinematographer Hajime Kai shot Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands on 35mm film using anamorphic lenses, framed at 2.35:1 for its theatrical release. (There’s significant anamorphic distortion at the edges of the frame, so it’s possible that something like Toeiscope lenses were used, since they had more distortion than Tohoscope lenses.) This version is based on the only known film element, a battered 35mm print that was scanned by Rapid Eye Movies in Germany. Digital restoration work was handled by Craig Rogers at Deaf Crocodile Films, but the print was in such poor shape that the process was a challenging one. The biggest issue was moisture damage that resulted in flicker, and while that effect has been reduced, it’s still visible at times. The fragmentary nature of the print means that there are missing frames that stand out as unintentional jump cuts, and there are also some scratches and other blemishes still visible (although most of the dirt and speckling is less noticeable). The fact that the source element was a later generation print means that the contrast range and shadow detail are both somewhat limited, but the contrast still looks as good as it can, and the black levels are deep if unavoidably murky. Thanks to the usual fine encoding work by David Mackenzie at Fidelity in Motion, the coarser print grain is reproduced accurately throughout. Considering what Rodger had to work with, this is an impressive digital restoration that leaves Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands looking as good as it possibly can.
Audio is offered in Japanese 2.0 mono DTS-HD Master Audio, with removable English subtitles. Audio restoration work was no less challenging than the video, enough so that Deaf Crocodile had to outsource most of it to Audio Mechanics in Burbank. There were sync issues, frame line noise, and other problems that have mostly been ameliorated here. There’s still some distortion present, with the dialogue frequently sounding compressed and a little muddy, and not all of the background noise could be eliminated. Yet it’s all clear enough, and Yōsuke Yamashita’s strikingly dissonant score sounds as good as it possibly can.
The Deaf Crocodile Films Limited Deluxe Edition Blu-ray release of Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands includes a 60-page booklet featuring essays by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Walter Chaw, and Chris D., as well as an interview with Keiko Satō. Everything comes housed in a rigid slipcase featuring new artwork designed by Beth Morris. There’s also a card tucked inside with a QR code that can be scanned in order to access transcribed versions of the bonus content. Note that Deaf Crocodile is also offering a Standard Edition that omits the booklet and the slipcase, although it still includes the QR code. The following extras are included, all of them in HD:
- Audio Commentary by Mike Leeder and Arne Venema
- Tomorrow Won’t Be a Dream (13:04)
- Interview with Alexander Zahlten (82:36)
- Restoration Demo (2:46)
The commentary features Asian film experts Mike Leeder and Arne Venema, both of whom leap into the task of discussing Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands with obvious relish. They provide an overview of the pink film genre while delving into this film’s title and the various possible English translations of it. They express open admiration for director Atsushi Yamatoya and his contributions to the genre, and also detail the filmographies of the various actors and crew, noting that some of the names are doubtless pseudonyms (as beautifully shot as Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands may be, it’s the only credit for “Hajime Kai” under that name). Leeder and Venema also explore the film thematically and structurally, comparing the latter to the serialized nonlinear storytelling in Pulp Fiction. They try to sort out that structure, providing their own road map for those confusingly ordered fragments (although they’re still willing to admit that there’s room for debate about reality vs. fantasy). If you’re looking for a wildly enthusiastic introduction to pinku eiga, Atsushi Yamatoya, and Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands, this is an entertaining way to start.
Tomorrow Won’t Be a Dream is a visual essay by film professor Dr. Will Dodson and Ryan Verill of The Disc-Connected. They put the film into context with the societal changes in post-war Japan, analyze the significance of the number three in the story, and do their best to untangle the impenetrable structure of Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands.
The interview with Japanese film and language scholar Alexander Zahlten was conducted online by Deaf Crocodile’s Dennis Bartok. They open by discussing Zahlten’s background before moving into a lengthy history of pink films (including “blue” films and Roman porno). It was an easy entry into the film business (and quite unusual in that these ultra-low budget films were shot on 35mm), so there were plenty of interesting filmmakers who worked in the genre, Atsushi Yamatoya included. Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands was also an unusual example since it was produced by a woman, yet while it still has many of the troubling elements that marked pink films, Yamatoya brought something else to it entirely. Even the title was unusual, and Zahlten delves into the complexities of translating Kōya no Datchi Waifu. It’s a fascinating interview that does a great job of illuminating the world of pinku eiga.
Finally, the Restoration Demo provides some comparisons of the raw scans of Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands to the final fixed shots, both consecutively and side-by-side. It also demonstrates some of the audio restoration work like eliminating the frame line noise.
Deaf Crocodile has already done an outstanding job of bringing a diverse collection of neglected world cinema to the rarefied world of physical media, and they’ve been instrumental in rescuing obscurities like Solomon King despite the fact that the original film elements no longer exist. Yet rescuing Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands was a Herculean task that makes even their Solomon King restoration look like child’s play in comparison. No, it’s not the best film, nor does it offer the best in video and audio quality, but from a preservation standpoint, their Blu-ray of Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands is easily one of the very best physical media releases of 2025 so far. It’s highly, highly recommended (well, at least for adventurous viewers, anyway).
-Stephen Bjork
(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, and Letterboxd).