Product Details

• Released on: 2005-10-25
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC, Import
• Original language: Japanese
• Subtitled in: English
• Running time: 88 minutes

Review
Without a doubt, this is one of the bleakest and most black-hearted exploitation films ever committed to celluloid. Even fans of grindhouse fare might want to approach Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs with care because it truly takes no prisoners. This film takes savage glee in creating a nasty, claustrophobic world where conventional values don't matter and people are either victims or aggressors. The audience isn't even allowed an identification figure; the titular heroine stands by passive as terrible things happen to others and herself, only lashing out at the last possible moment. This approach makes the brutality all the more cringe-inducing when it occurs and Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs revels in it. The film's many gruesome spectacles include someone getting their head gorily bashed in with a bottle, several rape scenes, and an epic torture sequence that uses all manner of construction tools. Needless to say, Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs is for specialized tastes, but it can't be rejected out of hand -- Yukio Noda's direction is as artful as it is feverish and the film generates a powerful feeling of delirium that is guaranteed to provoke a response out of the viewer. To sum up, Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs is a savage piece of work that has a certain appeal for the exploitation movie crowd, but even they should approach it with great caution. ~ Donald Guarisco, All Movie Guide

Synopsis
This new entry in the popular Zero Woman film series, Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs, begins with Agent Zero being imprisoned after getting overly violent with a rapist she was apprehending. She is released, however, when a powerful politician discovers his daughter has been kidnapped. Only Agent Zero has the skills to go undercover and save the daughter. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

DVD Menu

• Disc #1 -- Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs
  • Play Movie
  • Scene Selection
  • Subtitles
    • English: On/Off
  • Trailers
    • Zero Woman Trailer
    • Lupin III Trailer

Customer Reviews

This Week Special Includes: 1970's Japanese Blax...no..no..no... Exploitation
I read that there is a series to this that can never be beat, well I can believe that because originals are hard to surpass. After watching this it blew me away. So much gritty 70s cool and twisted violence, you'll swear that Quentin Tarantino is sitting next to you massaging your thigh. It's full of sex and violence! This isn't sexy or soft-core but a brutal movie not for the delicate. I love vengeance flick and a 70's Exploitation such as this from Japan I just had to see it.

The plot of Zero Woman was resurrected twenty years later for Luc Besson's La Femme Nikita: wildcat is saved from the gallows and forced to become an agent for the top secret Division Zero of the Tokyo police department. Armed with a gun, a badge and a pair of handcuffs that are all as nail polish-red as her skin-tight leather outfit (when she wears it), she is sent to investigate the kidnapping of a politician's daughter by a gang of psychopathic thugs. After infiltrating the gang, she stoically endures several rapes by its members to win their trust and then begins to imaginatively eradicate them one after another in her search for the missing girl.

Zero Woman is cold and calculating and kills without mercy. But there's no chance for you to feel sympathy for the brutal vermin that she exterminates. Though some have referred to this film as feminist, it's more a case of having your cake and eating it too. This results in a generous and a satisfy helping of a seriously stylish sleaze. I can't imagine viewers watching this without subtitles but for years, English speaking fans have had to put up with non-translated versions of this Japanese exploitation classic. Now, thanks to the gang at Discotek, old fans and new are supplied with subtitles so they can read along with the adventure Agent Zero slices, dices, shoots, burns and strangles with her handy red handcuffs, that magically open just wide enough to clamp around a person's neck, anyone she deems worthy enough of some swift justice. Plenty of over-the-top violence and naked bodies to please the hardest core of exploitation junkies.