Inferno Of Torture (Tokugawa irezumi-shi: Seme jigoku) appeared in 1969- and like the other films I’ve seen from the director is lushly directed & well conceived- with impressed period customs & sets. The film clocks in at one hour & thirty-four minutes, and sadly for me it felt more like two & a half hours, due to the rather bland- at points confusing period drama feel of much of the films runtime.

It opens in great blood-red & gory fashion- with a group of women been tortured outside- there’s a woman crucified who has her stomach & throat slashed- with the blood spraying in her killers face, then we see buried women get her head sawn off with a huge saw- all spurting red. As we get into the film properly we find a plot that finds a timid debt owning women been sold over to a kinky geisha brothel, where all the women get tattooed- and rented out to rich Japanese & Europeans for rope bondage, torture & general pain bound kinkiness. The sleaze/ gore is all very well executed, and extreme for the period- but the thing is weaved around it is a decidedly bland & disinteresting period drama. Sure Orgies Of Edo was also period drama, but it was an anthology- so the drama elements where kept cropped & relatively tight- sadly here they overwhelm much of the runtime- so you have drudge through boring drama, to get to the good stuff with little of Teruo Ishii more wacky & surreal traits that the other two films had. There's only one non-gore/kinky scene that stood out- a group of women are painted with neon body paint, and a black light is put on & you get some neat trippy imagery- though once again this went on way too long. In conclusion, I guess if you do enjoy fairly dramatic-if- by numbers historic period pieces, but can also stomach gore & kinky torture you may get more from Inferno Of Torture.

Moving onto the new Blu Ray- and first off Arrow has done a wonderful job on the new print of the film- the balance & definition of the picture is spot on, and the bright red tones do pop out of the screen. The subtitles are well presented and largely easy to read/ follow.
On the extras front, we get a commentary track from Japanese cinema expert Tom Mes- Mes is the go-to person for Japanese film, and he always does a good job with his tracks- been both informative & at times dryly humorous. Here he talks about Teruo Ishii's career as a whole, the controversy behind these erotic torture films in japan. Going on to discuss bios of selected cast, commenting on-screen action, and how this film predates many other counties extreme gore films- so it most certainly well worth a listen, even if the film didn't fully click with you. Next, we get a twenty-nine excerpt from a  lecture by Jasper Sharp- it was entitled Erotic Grotesque Nonsense & the Foundations of Japan s Cult Counterculture, and as part of it he discusses Teruo Ishii erotic gore films- it is another nice extra, and worth a play too. Lastly, we get a trailer.

It’s great to see Arrow putting out more of Japanese extreme cinema, and of course, making another one of Teruo Ishii available for all. Once again the company has done a great & classy job with this Blu Ray-  it’s just a pity it didn’t click with me, but as I said early if you enjoy period drama with some kinky & gory edges, then you may get more out of Inferno Of Torture than I did.