Gate of Flesh

In the ruins of post-war Tokyo, a group of prostitutes band together to survive on their own terms. They work the black markets and bombed-out streets, shutting out outsiders and answering to no one, holding together a fragile order amid the chaos and crime around them. Their arrangement is disturbed by the arrival of Shintaro Ibuki, a former soldier on the run after killing a man. He takes shelter with the women, and Maya, a young newcomer to the group whose family is dead, falls for him. Loyalties and jealousies among the women collide, and the situation moves toward tragedy.

Gate of Flesh was directed by Seijun Suzuki, the sixteenth of the twenty-six films he directed in chronological order, following Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell, Bastards! and preceding The Flower and the Angry Waves. Gorō Tanada wrote the screenplay, Kaneo Iwai produced it for Nikkatsu Corporation, and Joe Shishido and Yumiko Nogawa lead a cast that also includes Kōji Wada, Tomiko Ishii, Kayo Matsuo and Satoko Kasai. The film runs 90 minutes. On IMDb it holds a 7.2 rating from roughly 3,700 votes, while on TMDB its 6.6 rating rests on a much smaller base of 77 votes.