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Tokugawa Irezumi-shi: Seme Jigoku
Inferno of Torture
Tokugawa Tattoo History: Torture Hell
Japan 1969
produced by
Shigeru Okada for Toei
directed by Teruo Ishii
starring Teruo Yoshida, Masumi Tachibana, Asao Koike, Yumiko Katayama, Mieko Fujimoto, Haruo Tanaka, Yoshihiro Igarashi, Reiichi Hatanaka, Kei Katayama, Reiko Mikasa, Noriko Kuroda, Keiko Takagi, Yukiko Misasa, Michiko Tsukasa, Toru Yuri, Akira Oizumi, Keiko Odagiri, Fumi Mizukami, Kichijiro Ueda, Kiyoshi Hitomi, Yukie Kagawa, Yusuf Hoffman, Honey Lane, Shinichiro Hayashi, Mitsuko Aoi, Gannosuke Ashiya, Junko Maki, Miki Obana, Shinji Oda, Seiya Sato, Eiji Wakasugi
music by Masao Yagi
Joys of Torture
review by
Mike Haberfelner
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Oryo (Mieko Fujimoto) and Samejima (Haruo Tanaka) run a high class
geisha house - at least that's the respectable front, behind closed doors
and for customers with acquired tastes (and a wallet to go with those),
pretty much every form of torture, from bondage and whipping to rape of
virgins, has found a home here. And Oryo and Samejima are really not all
that honourable when it comes to "hiring" their working girls,
be it they buy them from prisons, or use a money-lending scheme to enslave
them and force them into prostitution. That said, their front is
immaculate, so when they are looking for a successor to the house's
resident tattooist, it's up to the shogun himself to decide. The two
contestants are Horihide (Teruo Yoshida) and Horitatsu (Asao Koike), who
are both madly in love with the old master's daughter Osuzu (Masumi
Tachibana). Osuzu's in love with Horihide, but he pretty much gets tricked
out of his win at the competition, then is accused of killing the master
even (actually the deed of Oryo and Samejima, who planted evidence
pointing at Horihide though) and imprisoned. Osuzu meanwhile is forced
into prostitution while Oryo hooks Horitatsu on heroin to make him her
willing slave - as tattooed Asian virgins are in heavy demand these days,
as a slaver from the west (Yusuf Hoffman) plans to sell them all over
Europe. Horihide manages to break free from prison, but when he comes to
save Osuzu, he finds her dying from self-administered poison. So he vows
revenge on everybody involved in her downfall, and that revenge involves
the most elaborate piece of tattoo he has ever done ... Inferno
of Torture might sound like one wild movie - and it certainly is, with
plenty of hard-to-stomach torture scenes and some quite explicite gore
effects. But it's also a very stylish film, with high production values,
great camerawork, delicously and fittingly grotesque imagery (especially
the competing tattoos of the climax are worth a mention), and a pretty
awesome score. And also, the film's told in a pretty avant garde way, one
that at times defies chronological order of things and gives way to
associative editing. Now of course, due to the on-screen violence and
over-emphasis on sexual situations, this is not a film for everybody, but
if you can accept those and are looking for more than just a quick fix,
then you'll very probably enjoy this.
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