I’ve never been a shogun and, sadly, probably never will. Mostly because while I may enjoy tacos and dogs and movies, if this flick truly leads me to believe one thing, it’s that shoguns only really enjoy the cruelest of tortures, primarily through inflicting it on other people’s bare bodies. There goes another dream!
One of director Teruo Ishii’s infamous flicks of sex, violence and torture, often at the same time, this Toei production is a supposed anthology of the heinous practices documented on scrolls during the height of Tokugawa shogun. It features a catalog of barbarism that deftly mixes penile titillation with painful humiliation, seemingly a specialty of Ishii.
Focusing on three stories, Shogun’s Joy of Torture begins with a young woman and an illicit romance with her recently hurt brother and the scummy lawmen who jealously take their sexual issues out on her, with, of course, violent retribution.
The same goes for the second story, featuring the unbridled passions and unheralded smacks at a Buddhist nunnery. And the final story, which honestly wouldn’t seem out of place in an otherworldly Amicus production, depicts a tattoo artist who wants to get as close to death as utterly possible and achieves it with the help of a sadistic shogun.
Each tale is, as you’d probably imagine, beautifully — but brutally! — told, with excesses of ropes, whips, chains and other instruments of haughty pain throughout, used primarily on women hanging from the ceiling. While I’m sure a trigger warning is necessary for most viewers — I know I could’ve used two or three — this depiction of sex and sadism is a well-made movie that, I’m sure, will make someone’s penis suitably hard. —Louis Fowler