Released in 1969 Orgies Of Edo is a bizarre crossbreed between very well filmed & lushly costumed Japanese period drama, sleazed & perverse sexploitation, and bloody red spurting horror- with more than a few generous grinds of weird-ness added in. It’s an analogy/portmanteau film bringing together three stories from the Edo period in Japan (1615 – 1868), with each tale getting steadily more sleazy, perverse & unhinged.

Each of the stories last around the thirty-minute mark, and there’s no joining story- with each flowing together; which adds an extra element of surprise/ oddness to the mix. The first tale tells of two sisters- one is forced into prostitution to pay her debuts and along the way we  get a troubling love triangle, some breathing-taking shots, and a beautiful but- unsettling finale that sees rope bondage & whippings taking place in a ornate snow falling garden. 
The next tale is about a rich lady & her servant- she is obsessed with having sex with deformed & unusually looking men-  this tale starts off with two dwarfs trying to rape the women, before she chases after her with a whip. As this section goes on we get snake swallowing performers, creepy burnt face perverts, self-mutilation, and spurting gore.
The final story focuses on a powerful lord obsessed with torturing women-  he finds his perfect partner who’s willing to take his perverse batterings. This one is really very deranged, as early on we get a scene where a group of  topless women  dressed in red are  bloody gorged by bulls with fire lit horns. As it goes on we get a loads more oddness & sleaze, which along the way takes in a woman been painted completely gold & sat in a hall of mirrors, and a brutal caesarean section.

I very much enjoyed the surreal & unbalancing flow of Teruo Ishii other recent Horror Of Malformed Man, but Orgies Of Edo really blows that out of the water with its shock & depravity- so if you enjoyed that  film, but wanted something more extreme, then this is most definitely for you.

Extra wise, unfortunately, there’s not a lot on the disc- aside from an around twenty-minute interview Patrick Maccias, where he discusses the film, and it’s impact- this is informative & interesting enough, it just would have been nice to have a bit more. Other than this we get an original trailer. Apparently, the released version of the film comes with a booklet featuring a new write-up about the film from oriental film expert Tom Mes- but as we’ve only got a screener disc I can’t comment on this. The new 1080p scan of the film is extremely good, really enhancing both the more classy elements & of course the gore/ depravity too.

If you enjoy brutal & strange transgressive cinema you really have to see Orgies Of Edo- as it really is an unforgettable experience. Let's hope Arrow has plans to release more of Teruo Ishii films in the near future- as he certainly is an artful, yet deranged talent.