Orgies of Edo, 1969.
Directed by Teruo Ishii.
Starring Teruo Yoshida, Toyozô Yamamoto, Masumi Tachibana, Akira Ishihama, and Mitsuko Aoi.
SYNOPSIS:
Anthology featuring three stories revolving around the punishment and torture of women set during Japan’s Gentoku era.
During the late ‘60/early ‘70s a sub-genre of Japanese cinema called pinky violence came to prominence, with a collection of movies featuring all manner of what was then considered extreme violence, torture and sex. Legendary director Teruo Ishii was one of the driving forces of this wave of ultra-violent films and his 1969 movie Orgies of Edo one of the more notable and wacky of the lot, and thanks to Arrow Video is now able to be seen in a stunning restoration on Blu-ray.
Split into three stories linked by a singular character who pops up in all three segments, Orgies of Edo opens with an incredibly bizarre credits scene in which a drag artist dressed as a marionette leaves the dolls house in which he/she is placed with other ‘toys’ – and do pay attention to the other characters in the dolls house, especially the female with four breasts – and starts dancing – is there a reason for this? A metaphor about being manipulated like a puppet? Or perhaps a twisted cautionary warning about the gender roles about to play out in the three shorts? Perhaps, but probably not as pinky violence is closer to American grindhouse than anything else and sometimes freaky images are just freaky for the sake of it.
The first segment is the most straightforward of the three, where naive young woman Oito (Masumi Tachibana) is tricked into turning to prostitution by a charming con man. Believing she will one day be reunited with her lover Oito degrades herself before discovering the truth about her beau who, in Oito’s absence, has taken a shining to her sister, with events leading to a tragic and brutal finale which, by contrast, is at odds with how gorgeous the film looks, from the colourful traditional Japanese costumes to the wide landscape shots that are as much of a character of the film as the actors.
The second story centres around a beautiful young woman named Ochise (Mitsuko Aoi) who is only able to be sexually satisfied by men with deformities or anybody who is basically deemed a societal reject, which leads to being licked all over by dwarves, being held prisoner by a leper with severe facial burns and the acquisition of an African bodybuilder to see to her every sexual whim. There is a reason for her peculiar tastes, which is shown in flashback, and again tragedy isn’t far away as the one man who truly loves Ochise goes to extreme lengths to keep her happy. A more intimate tale than the first story, this second segment ups the weirdness but is nothing when compared to what comes next.
And what comes next is the story of a depraved nobleman (Asao Koike) who keeps a harem of women to carry out his every desire, which is fine until he meets Omitsu (Miki Obana), a young woman with as extreme and bizarre tastes as him, and then all hell breaks loose as people get strung up, painted gold, gored with bull’s horns, whipped, stripped and generally abused for entertainment. Oh yes, this one goes totally bonkers, as if the first two stories were appetisers and this is the main course.
All of which may sound exciting to the gore hounds and grindhouse nuts out there but this film is from Japan and, despite coming under the umbrella of pinky violence, by today’s standards is still fairly tame stuff in terms of graphic content, with breasts being the only flesh on display here as far as eroticism goes and you never actually see anybody having sex despite how much it is implied. However, what director Teruo Ishii is going for here is putting on camera the most outlandish and absurd ideas he can get away with and, sexual content aside, he achieves a wild and wacky ride through his clearly warped mind with the violence and sadism he does manage to film, culminating in an abortion scene that isn’t helped by the clarity of the Blu-ray print revealing the joins in the make-up but is still quite shocking to see done in so blatant a way.
Coming backed with a trailer and a fascinating interview with author and Japanese pop culture expert Patrick Macias, Orgies of Edo is so enjoyably weird and crazy that you cannot help but be amazed by the sheer audacity of what Teruo Ishii was attempting. The bright colour schemes, set designs and costumes all look fantastic and you truly get the sense of a master at work as each story plays out with a bit of a morality sting in the tail but is ultimately trying to entertain, which they all do, and with each story clocking in at about 30 minutes Orgies of Edo never outstays its welcome. It may not be for everyone but dammit if that isn’t what makes Orgies of Edo so much fun.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Chris Ward
