Suzuki's nihilism traces back to the war years when he was among a generation of men taught to desire death. His war films such as Story of a Prostitute, interestingly, are about women and their war. Gate of Flesh, based on a notorious novel by Taijiro Tamura, is set in the melee of the immediate postwar period. Amidst the black market, the homelessness and starvation, and missionary and GI attempts to conquer hearts, minds, and bodies, a group of prostitutes make a home in an abandoned building. A strict territorial imperative applies, and free sex is punishable by sadistic pay-back. These violent set-pieces are no less disturbing because performed by women. The word "rivetting" in film reviews sometimes sounds like a form of viewing torture and in this case, it applies: we can't take our eyes off this overwrought, rubble-strewn setting, can't turn away from the violence, precisely because Suzuki manages to make us root for the tawdry whores in their bright, color-coded shifts that look like Funny Face gone ballistic.