There is an entire genre of Japanese films created solely because Japanese people didn’t want to watch domestic movies at the time and were super into western and imported films. It’s called Pinku and it tried to lure Japanese audiences back in with sex, and sometimes violence. Even though a lot of the films were almost porn, a few of them were quite good as movies, because directors and writers were often given near free reign so long as they met the flesh quota. It was so bad that Japan’s oldest film studio, Nikkatsu, was producing pinku films exclusively for some time.
At the same time, there was a guy who thought, “Hey, maybe we can get people to watch domestic films if they’re really fucking WEIRD”, and he made Hausu, a film where a girl is eaten alive by a piano.