A lot of fun.

What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Death Ride To Osaka is quite a harrowing film, where at the end of this, from our lead's perspective, we too feel drained as we've been put through this poor girl's ordeal. A vulnerable girl (Leigh) answers an ad for a hostess/ singer, and boy, is she mislead. The ads a front for a sex slavery ring. This is an all too real situation, where our innocents who show promise, whether it's in singing, acting, modelling, travel to Asian countries where it's not long before they're hooked on drugs, and are selling their bodies, where the crime syndicates profit big time. Here our lass, is a promising singer, where here in Tokyo, is not all she ends up doing. Defying the bastards who are using her for sex, she goes to the authorities to no avail. She is truly trapped. The boyfriend, a marine, who returns home, sets out after her, he too describing his girlfriend as vulnerable. Death Ride doesn't go for the sex or nudity either. There's little of either. It takes it's subject from a realistic standpoint, where we share Carol's journey and plight to escape this hell hole. And when the girls complain too much, they're sent on that death ride, where in Osaka, it's a much deeper hell. An older woman who's sent there, escapes, and is run down. A younger woman at the start, protesting to an older John about touching her, we revisit her later where she now looks older and highly drugged, forming a lazy speech pattern. Leigh fits the bill superbly amongst other good players. Although a t.v. movie. this is an eye opener for teens out there who have stars in their eyes, not to be duped by every ad they see, where this film serves as a forewarning to the dangers that are hugely present in far away countries.

After studying the four comments made previously to this one, I see no need to do more than fill in the oversights from same. Obviously, anyone commenting on this title on IMDb has most likely seen a cheap DVD version (if and when the Jennifer Jason Leigh Collection comes out, this virtual public service announcement will NOT make the cut). The cheesiness of my DVD packagers ("Kreative Digital Entertainment" and "Hearst Entertainment") is exemplified by their clearly listing this 1983 flick as a "2004" film in the middle of the back cover. But just because these rip-off artists (who offer absolutely no extras--not even a trailer) are anachronistic, that's no excuse to retroactively fault this movie or JJL's Carol Heath character for being too naive, since it would not be until the next century that Dateline NBC ground out umpteen thousand internet sex stings. At the time this true-life warning sounded, many of the 20-something women I knew could well have been suckered in by the make-your-fortune-in-Tokyo gambit. After all, not much later an unknown never-was named Cecil Fielder returned to the U.S. from the Japanese off-off Broadway and immediately became the first major leaguer to bash out a 50-homer season in decades.

Viewed this film under the title, "Death Ride to Osaka" which is the same film as "Girls of the White Orchid" which deals with the Japanese Mafia who run an establishment that deals with young girls from America who have some talent like singing and dancing and are willing to selling their bodies for entertainment. However, these young girls are hired by an agency in the Los Angeles who advertise for young talented gals and they have no idea what they are really being hired for. Jennifer Jason Leigh, (Carol Heath) is one of these young girls who falls into this trap and finds herself trapped in Japan and at the mercy of dirty old men and Mafia pimps. This story goes on and on and begins to get very boring with girls trying to escape and some being sent to OSAKA.

I bought this DVD not expecting a whole lot given its price tag of $6.99, and it was neither better nor worse than I expected. Only bought it because Jennifer Jason Leigh, who stars, is one of my favorite actresses. BTW, you might be confused looking at the DVD's front cover (which IMDb reproduces), because it shows a picture of co-star Ann Jillian with a caption of "Jennifer Jason Leigh". Dunno if the schlock DVD producers didn't know the difference or if they just thought the photo of Jillian all dolled up like a prostitute would be more eye-grabbing.The film itself is about as good as you'd expect a U.S. TV "movie of the week" from 1983 to be. Interestingly, there's some nudity (the breasts of Jennifer Jason Leigh and a couple of other actresses make an appearance), so I wonder if it was produced for a pay-TV channel.I was surprised to find out after watching the film that it's based on a true story (I don't think they mention this in the credits anywhere). You'd never think this given the unrealistic nature of many of the events in the film.Other than the stilted dialogue, lack of imagination, bog-standard camera setups, and whatnot, an annoying factor is the cross-racial casting. True, the average American can't tell at a glance from where in Asia someone comes from, but Asians can tell, and Asiaphiles can tell. Much worse than the non-Japanese-looking actors, however, is the absolutely horrible pronunciation of Japanese dialogue. Oddly, none of the Japanese dialogue is subtitled, which wouldn't have been too terrible for me, as I speak Japanese, but the language is so butchered by the non-Japanese-natives that I couldn't comprehend much of it. In one scene an American actress seems to use nonsense syllables when she's supposed to be speaking Japanese (perhaps she couldn't remember her line or they didn't get it translated for her in time or something).To sum up, fans of Jennifer Jason Leigh (or T2 score-writer Brad Fiedel) may want to watch this out of curiosity, but others need not bother. Personally, I had to watch Leigh's wonderful performance in "The Hudsucker Proxy" afterwards to wash the bad taste out of my mouth.