Shiro (Tetsuro Tanba) is a disillusioned former samurai who has become
the top assassin of the region because of his superior swordsplaying
skills - but that also means each and every official is after him - and
when he finds himself surrounded by soldiers and has grown tired of
killing, he tries to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge ... but
instead of drowning, he is saved and soon finds himself in bed with three
naked women who try to warm his body - and I think you can picture how.
The women belong to the Bohachi, the Clan of the Forgotten Eight,
called so because clanmembers have lost all their emotions and their
conscience and are particularly ruthless. For example, if women can't pay
their due, the Bohachi abduct them, have them stripped and whipped and
then shag them into submission for three straight days before making them
into prostitutes - the Bohachi's regular source of income.
The Bohachi want to make Shiro one of them, but first they test him by
leaving him with a new girl they have just abducted, with her being naked
and tied to a bed spreadeagled. When Shiro does not rape her for
all she's good for, the Bohachi figure he has still got a conscience and
does not deserve to become one of them - and they leave him to continue
his fight against the soldiers - whom they have actually called.
Then though the head of the Bohachi shows up and puts Shiro under his
protection - he can do that because pretty much every official is on his
payroll. This all happens because the head of the Bohachi sees the grander
design of things and knows he needs a man like Shiro among his ranks, true
Bohachi or not.
Thing is, in recent years, a rival clan has introduced so-called tea
houses into the city where self-employed prostitutes are doing their
business, posing a serious financial threat to the Bohachi prostitutes,
and now the Bohachi need muscle - like superior swordsman Shiro - to drive
the self-employed prostitutes and the rival clan with them out of town.
Scaring the prostitutes away is rather easy, but fighting the rival
clan proves to be rather difficult, but thanks to Shiro's skills and his
female bodyguards (who all get nude at often the most inappropriate
moments) is the harder task - but ultimately, Shiro succeeds in that too.
As a token of gratitude, Shiro is invited to spend a night of sin and
opium smoking with the head of his female bodyguards - but actually that
was a trick of the Bohachi big boss, because the woman was suffering from
syphillis, and the big boss figured that the only way to get rid of a
master swordsman like Shiro, for whom the Bohachi have no more need, was
to contract him with syphillis - which will come to full bloom once the
opium wears off. Shiro though is not one to give up easily, and while
syphillis hasn't yet wiped out his senses he makes the boss his captive
and locks him into the Bohachi's syphillis cell - the cell where they keep
their whores suffering from syphillis.
The Bohachi subcommander ... thanks Shiro, because now he can be the
head of the Bohachi, and offers the swordsman employ - but Shiro declines,
and suddenly he has to fight the Bohachi army and the soldiers after him
while the opium wears off and his senses keep going, but by continually
injuring himself to keep his mind off syphillis, he manages to deliver one
hell of a fight ...
A very bizarre samurai picture deeply rooted in sexploitationand very
obviously directed by Teruo Ishii, Japan's master of the bizarre. And
though samurai and sexploitation do not necessarily go together by
deffinition, Bohachi works just admirably, a film full of grotesque
and macabre plot elements that against all odds fall together greatly
creating a world all of their own within genre confines.
Truth to be told, the film might not be 100 percent politically
correct, but other than that it's a definite must-see.
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