Shogun's Joy Of Torture (Arrow / Feb. 23, 2021)

[Takuma]

Arrow will be releasing one of my favourite Teruo Ishii films, the legendary shocker and box office smash hit The Joy of Torture aka Shogun’s Joy of Torture on BD. There’s been a bit of talk already in the JP cinema and Arrow threads, but I think this deserves a topic of its own.

“From the outrageous imagination of cult director Teruo Ishii (Orgies of Edo, Horrors of Malformed Men) comes this infamous omnibus of three shocking tales of crime and punishment based on true-life documented cases set during the reign of the Tokugawa shogunate.

The first tale sees the beautiful Mitsu (Masumi Tachibana) going to horrifying lengths to tend to her older brother Shinzō (Teruo Yoshida), a carpenter injured in a work accident, but the law catches up on them and metes out a terrifying retribution after they violate the ultimate taboo. In the second, unfettered passions in a Buddhist nunnery are not allowed to go unpunished after abbess Reihō (Yukie Kagawa) and her attendant Rintoku (Naomi Shiraishi) encounter a virile young monk from a neighboring temple. In the closing segment, a sadistic torturer (Fumio Watanabe) attempts to show a tattoo artist (Asao Koike) how to depict convincing expressions of faces of pain in his work by allowing him to sketch a selection of Europeans as they are tortured for entering Japan with the aim of spreading Christianity.

Ishii’s notorious portmanteau of Edo-era excess signaled a change in direction for a director until then regarded for his crime and yakuza films, setting the ball rolling on the run of grotesque historical anthologies for which he is now best remembered. Vehemently denounced by the critics of the day, Shogun’s Joy of Torture set a new benchmark for the depiction of sex, sadism and depravity in Japanese exploitation, with Ishii staging his elaborate torture methods with an unmatched verve and inventiveness.

SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS
• High Definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation
• Original uncompressed mono PCM audio
• Optional English subtitles
• Audio commentary by Japanese cinema expert Tom Mes
• Teruo Ishii: Erotic-Grotesque Maestro – an exclusively newly filmed interview with the author Patrick Macias
• Bind, Torture, Thrill – author and critic Jasper Sharp discusses the history of torture in Japanese exploitation cinema
• Original trailer
• Image gallery
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Jacob Phillips