EDITOR’S NOTE: Randy Victor Ian helps cover the Japanese roman porno beat for B&S About Movies.
You know you’re in for a roman porno that has more lighthearted moments than usual when the opening scene involves oversized sausages on a pile of spaghetti. Don’t get too comfortable, though, as director Noboru Tanaka’s Night of the Felines has its share of heaviness, too.
Tomoko Matsura shines as Masako, a sex worker in a Turkish bathhouse in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district. She’s involved somehow — many elements are either never explained or touched on and then forgotten in the film — with her neighbor Honda (Ken Yoshizawa), who eats a cabbage dangling from the ceiling while watching neighbors have sex. This leads to toe sex during the voyeurism. No one can accuse Night of the Felines of not providing plenty of head-scratching scenes.
Enter gay hustler Makoto (Hidetoshi Kageyama), who is involved in another never-made-clear relationship with Honda and who is interested in a potential new girlfriend but worried about his first-time sexual encounter with a woman. For all of the humorous sequences that this leads to as Honda talks Masako into helping Makoto out of that jam, the film leads to a shocking event that causes the film to take a sudden melodramatic turn.
There’s plenty of nudity — private parts masked or obscured by objects, of course, which is the standard for roman pornos — and besides full-body massages and back scrubbing at the bathhouse, we get a fair share of scenes of Masako in the buff, including doing topless vacuuming and topless breakfast eating in her apartment.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a roman porno without some rough sex, which here includes a scene between a customer and an employee at the turkish bath house, and an S&M photography sequence with Makoto.
Along with Matsura’s outstanding performance, Yoshizawa and Kageyama provide fine work, and the supporting players — mostly Masako’s coworkers and their clients — all turn in solid performances. The bathhouse girls are all likable characters and they get along well with each other and are supportive of one another.
Tanaka helms the film with some nice artistic flourishes — avoiding spoilers, two scenes with umbrellas stand out, one played for laughs and the other quite the opposite. Night of the Felines moves at a nice clip and serves as an entertaining roman porno effort.
Night of the Felines is available on VOD and all leading digital platforms from Film Movement Plus from August 14, 2026.
