Has anyone seen BLACK KISS? I just rented Media Blaster's DVD. Its a bit of a cross between SE7EN, a Dario Argento film, and some of those eighties fashion/modeling gialli (NOTHING UNDERNEATH, TOO BEAUTIFUL TO DIE and the like rather than earlier ones like BLOOD AND BLACK LACE). I wrote a review with screencaps for DVDBeaver (I'll post a link when its up at the site).

People have been dropping dead around Kisumi, a cynical ex-model: her sister, two suicidal boyfriends, and her eccentric artist roommate Mari has just disappeared. As a result, she's aimed the nickname "The Devil" (she also has a turtle named Mephisto). She just seems to be unlucky until her new roommate, naive new model Asuka witnesses - in the window of the sleazy hotel across from their apartment - the mutilation murder of a man who had been harassing Kisumi. She recognizes the killer from one of Kisumi's photographs as the missing ex-roommate Mari but Mari turns out to have been murdered (and stuffed) two weeks prior to the killing Asuka witnessed yet the photographer who has been stalking Asuka notices Mari in the background of in a photograph he took the night of the murder. With more bodies of Kisumi's friends and rivals piling up, soon the police begin to wonder whether the man who killed Kisumi's sister and hung himself in prison along with Kisumi's two suicidal boyfriends might have been earlier victims of the same killer and whether someone is trying to frame Kisumi or possess her. Either way, Asuka is likely the next victim.

Suspenseful and compelling up until its less-than-satisfying ending (the director wanted to defy serial-killer film conventions), BLACK KISS is beautifully shot (a sort of neon-gelled version of SE7EN's universe rather than Dario Argento's) but suffers a bit in its structuring (and 2+ hour running time). Unlike the serial killer films - but like giallo films focused on the prurient aspects of the fashion world - the police procedural scenes provide mainly expository plot info that the suspects and victims are not going to fess up and are rife with more red herrings than the scenes involving the suspects - including a tangent involving a criminologist with an interest in voodoo who only provides a previously available profile on the killer that no one else bothered to look for only after he has himself become a suspect (having also been present in the crime scene photograph along with Mari).

The DVD is a tad problematic. The image has a lot of edge enhancement (it looks smooth on an interlaced TV but painful to look at in some shots on a progressive monitor) which also makes some blue screen and wire more apparent. Compression issues result from cramming a 2 hour plus film and extras from the two-disc Japanese set onto one dual-layer disc (the total size of the film and extras is only 6.60 GB). Deleted scenes are included with subtitles along with the trailer and two featurettes dominated by the director's ambiguous interpretation of his own plot which sounds even more ludicrous when he discusses it. Trailers for this film along with ICHI THE KILLER, ULTIMATE VERSUS (looks unintersting), SCORPION COLLECTION, and THE ZOO are also included.

Thanks for the heads-up on BLACK KISS. I browsed your post and I'll put it in my netflix queue. Fincher, Argento and gialli in the world of haute couture. :D Sounds like my cup of tea! B)

Here is the DVDBeaver review with screencaps I did for the film.