Tokugawa onna keibatsu-emaki: Ushi-zaki no kei (1976)

... aka: 徳川女刑罰絵巻 牛裂きの刑

... aka: Joy of Torture 2: Oxen Split Torturing, The
... aka: Oxen Split Torture
... aka: Shogun's Sadism

Directed by:
Yûji Makiguchi

The subtitle itself should clue you in to what kind of film this follow-up to 1968's THE JOY OF TORTURE (1968) is: A cash in. "Oxen Split Torturing" alludes to one of the more gruesome moments in the original film, where a woman is tied to two oxen and pulled apart, which is the kind of gross out this film wallows in. While the first had a distinct point of view and worked its various tortures into the message it was trying to convey, this one goes for pure unadulterated exploitation while only feigning being a message movie. Mean-spirited, tasteless and very, very nasty, this isn't made with anywhere near the skill Teruo Ishii's original was, has continuity issues galore, some major overacting and ill-conceived attempts at comedy. Things open with black-and-white "mondo" stills of real dead or dying people (charred corpses, Holocaust victims, etc.) to make us start feeling icky right out of the gate, a quote to feed us the supposed moral of the story (" 'The weak become the victim of the strong' is a rule of mankind.") and then three brief faked executions (a woman dunked in boiling water, a man hung and then cut in two and a woman burned at the stake). Unlike the first film, which was divided into three stories with linking segments, this is just two stories.

Our first tale is set in Nagasaki in 1628. Handsome young samurai Iori (Yûsuke Kazato) is bitten by a snake and a young beauty named Toyo (Rena Uchimura) comes to the rescue and sucks out the venom, then invites him back to her families home to recover. Meanwhile, in the main village, a sadistic, corrupt Lord is busy having people branded to try to get them to renounce their Christian faith. Since this doesn't work and he's bored watching it, he instructs one of his men to create new, more effective and more entertaining tortures for his to cackle at. And that he does! A woman is put in a large aquarium and has dozens of poisonous snakes dumped on her, a man has his foot crushed by a giant mallet and another is cooked alive in a giant pot. To quickly move up the ladder in the village, Iori allows a cross to be planted on Toyo's families farm and then becomes the Lord's personal assistant. The virginal Toyo is brought in and tied up. The Lord informs her "You will soon forget your God and cling to me like a bitch!" before raping her and making her become his concubine. He then tries to force her to out other Christians in the area. Since this film is so poorly structed (or possibly because the English subs are poorly done), it's never quite clear whether Toyo or anyone else for that matter really are Christian or if it's all just an excuse for the Lord to get his warped jollies.

Toyo basically goes through hell while Iori sits around pouting in shame. Toyo's kid sister is beat over the head with a cane and then has her eyes burnt out with a fire poker before being thrown out of the village. Toyo's parents are tied to crosses, speared and then burned alive right in front of their daughter. Immediately afterward, the Lord rapes Toyo again and she has her very first orgasm. Hey, I told you this was sick. Iori has his samurai status stripped away and is banished from the kingdom for refusing to cooperate with the Lord. A year passes, Iori returns to rescue Toyo but they are captured again. He's filled full of aarows and speared and she gets ripped apart by bulls. The narrator then tries to inject some irony into the proceedings by informing us that later the evil Lord (who actually eats live lizards on screen) got promoted to feudal lord and then became the "Minister of Religion."

The second portion (set in Fukagawa Edo in 1821) is an incredibly stupid tale which centers are a whorehouse and (I think) is supposed to be funny. Sutezo (Takuzô Kawatani), a loud, extremely obnoxious pathological liar who claims to be from a rich family but isn't, runs up a bill on boarding, booze, food and prostitutes that he cannot pay. For punishment, the owner of the whorehouse forces him to work there for an entire year. We then get to see the various trials and tribulations of the hookers. When one of them steals another's customer the girls hold her down, cover her with some gunk and let a bunch of dogs lick it off... and the "victim" seems to enjoy every second of it. Another hooker named Tami gets pregnant and for punishment a bunch of men kick and knee her in the crotch and then an old woman fists her and yanks the fetus out (!!!) She's then forced to go back to work and almost dies. With help from one of the men, she tries to help her escape but the two are captured, tortured and killed. His new boss even makes Sutezo cut off the man's dick (after forcing him to eat his ear).

Sick and tired of the abuse, Sutezo and his favorite of the girls, Sato (Maki Tachibana), a gluttonous eater and none-too-bright it seems, run away and find their life of crime on the outside just as harsh. They concoct a scam to sell Sato to other local brothels but run off after she's sold... even if that means wading through a pit of shit and getting pissed on to get out. After a fight, Sato goes off on her own and gets gang raped by a bunch of dirty beggars. Sutezo kills them and then the two find themselves on the run from the law. They're captured by the authorities, tied up back to back, beat with bamboo poles and subjected to various other tortures including getting toes chopped off, nipples ripped off and being tied to a water wheel. Eventually they're put in a rack in the public square with a saw placed near their heads. Anyone in the village can decapitate them if they so choose to, but Sato is spared decapitation in favor of life as a concubine. The end.

Loaded with gore, misery, screaming, torture, nudity, rape and sex (though any thrusting - clothed or not - is fogged out on the version I saw), this has a healthy budget and is more tasteless and "extreme" than many better known American or European counterparts from the same time. That in itself doesn't exactly make this better per se, but it's sick and mean enough to possibly attract a larger audience than the first film. I found a major tonal issue here, though. Much of the time it's cartoonish and over-the-top, but then it'll whip out the dramatic music in an ill-fated attempt to try to make us care or sympathize with the undeveloped cardboard cutouts contained within.

The DVD is from Japan Shock.

★★

Tokugawa onna keibatsu-shi (1968)

... aka: Joy of Torture, The
... aka: Punishment of the Tokugawa Women
... aka: Shogun's Joy of Torture
... aka: Tokugawa 1

Directed by:
Teruo Ishii

You know this episodic Toei Production means business when the opening credits include a decapitation, a body sliced in two, a burning at the stake and a woman being tied spread eagle in front of a pole and pulled apart by two by oxen! This is very graphic and adult oriented material for its time in more ways than one: ballsy, button pushing stuff really. There's no way in hell the images contained in this mainstream film would escape past the censors in America or many other countries during its era. And I'm not just talking about the violence, gore and frequent nudity on display. I'm talking about depictions of a brother and sister passionately kissing, a man raping a virgin in front of her dying brother, a tight close up of lesbian nuns making out, nuns and priests going down on each other and more. It's also funny how something over forty years old can completely bury more modern "torture porn" crap not only when it comes to substance, artistry, performance and overall production values, but also in its actual depictions of on-screen torture, suffering and bloodletting. This isn't a "joy" to watch, but it's not meant to be. It's basically a condemnation of cruelty, torture and capital punishment of anyone - "deserving" by current law or not - at the hands of their "superiors."

The first tale is set in a small farming village, where Shinza is seriously injured after a tree hits him in the head. Wealthy village master Mino arranges for a doctor the family cannot afford to help him recover. Why so generous? Because he wants Shinza's beautiful younger sister Mitsu to become one of his mistresses. Because their parents are dead, her brother is laid up for months and Shinza's odd jobs aren't quite cutting it, she finally gives in to the master so he can continue to pay for the doctor. When her brother catches word, he confesses his love to his sister and the two end up becoming much more acquainted than any siblings should. Mino finds out about the incest and, knowing it's punishable by death in their village, decides to blackmail Mitsu. After raping her in front of her brother/ lover, a shamed Shinza commits suicide. Mitsu lashes out against Mino and slices him up, then is apprehended. What follows is plenty of torture as the village elders decide to try to beat a confession out of Mitsu. She finally confesses to the incest and ends up tied to an upside cross and left to slowly drown for punishment.

Next up is a sensuous and bloody tale of lust, jealousy and corrupt heirarchy set in a sheltered religious convent in 1666. New abbess Mother Reiho is sent to a secluded nunnery from the head convent (where all the nuns shave their heads), along with her servant Rintoku, who's also her lover. Reiho is told early on that the nuns don't fraternize with the priests who live at the nearby Juko temple. She happens to catch sight of priest Shunkai having a secret rendezvous with a nun named Myoshin and uses this against the priest to get him to make love to her (under a waterfall). When her desire for future liasons are denied, she uses her high position in the convent pecking order to enact some grueling tortures against Myoshin in hopes she or Shunkai will give up on their relationship. Poor Myoshin is terrorized with leeches, being tied upside down and spun around and then having her private area stuffed full of red pepper and then branded with a hot poker. This segment has a bloody decapitation, concludes with crazed nuns being gored to death on crosses and ultimately asks the question whether or not it's immoral to put the mentally ill to death.

Our final tale - set in 1671 - centers around prideful tattoo artist Horicho, who fancies himself the best in his field. When the powerful and ruthless Lord Nambara criticizes his work, Horicho becomes obsessed with perfecting his craft. He spots Hana, a young virgin with fair skin at a local bath, then kidnaps her, drugs her and tattoos her private parts to ensure that no man will want her and she'll be his obedient slave. Now with a blank canvas at his disposal, Horicho needs to learn the true meaning of agony to improve upon his drawings. The Lord invites him to the magistrate's office to bear witness to their most cruel tortures. They've gathered up a group of caucasian female Christian missionaries (!) who are whipped, lead around on leashes, have huge stones placed on their laps, burnt with fire and candlewax, drunked under water, put in a rack, you name it. Horicho watches it all unfold while working on tattooing Hana's entire body with ugly scenes are torment and torture.

Bleak, depressing, grueling and sometimes even a bit tedious to sit through, Joy of Torture is pretty much laid out just like a warped research paper, starting with a thesis statement and then using its individual stories to further illustrate its main point. Though structured completely differently, it can be seen as a precursor to stuff like Pasolini's SALO, MEN BEHIND THE SUN or any number of later Nazi death camp or torture flicks. The acting, art direction, production values, makeup, photography and editing are all very, very good.

First distributed on VHS by Video Screams, it's now available on DVD through Japan Shock. It was followed by at least one follow-up: THE JOY OF TORTURE 2: OXEN SPLIT TORTURE (1976) as well as some unofficial ones (including director Ishii's INFERNO OF TORTURE [1969]).

 
★★★

Jing hun feng yu ye (1982)

... aka: 凶劫

... aka: 摧花風雨夜

... aka: 驚魂風雨夜

... aka: Devil Returns

... aka: Gloomy Stormy Night, A

... aka: Xiong jie

Directed by:
Richard Chen

A robber and rapist is on the loose. School teacher Mei-hsun Fang (Emily Y. Chang) has the misfortune of getting a taxi ride from the creep, who ends up chasing her into an abandoned building and bashes her head against the ground until she's a bloody mess (and presumably rapes her off-screen). Almost killed in the incident, Mei-hsun is rushed off to the hospital to recuperate. After recovering, she identifies her attacker in a police line-up and he's executed. Mei-hsun marries her engineer boyfriend Yu-ching Lo (Alan Tam) and plans to settle in to a comfortable upper middle class life. Well, not quite. Mei-hsun is haunted by images of her attacker and can't seem to get him out of her mind. Her shrink says she's neurotic and has a persecution complex. Mei-hsun also discovers she's pregnant and knows she's not ready for it. When her doctor refuses to abort it without her husband's consent, Mei-hsun is forced to go to a sleazy abortionist who only accepts cash. Before the operation can commence, the nurse becomes possessed, slashes at the doctor with a scalpel and some kind of supernatural force throws him out of the window. Mei-hsun flees in terror.

Accepting the baby growing inside of her, Mei-hsun continues on with her pregnancy, frequently telling her still-not-yet born baby she hates it and knows its going to be evil. In a last ditch effort to terminate the pregnancy, she throws herself down a flight of stairs. Instead of miscarrying, the baby is born a month premature. A month passes and the baby starts behaving strangely. It sleeps and eats all day, but stays up all night crying. OK, so maybe that's not all that strange... But how many 6 month olds are able to crawl and can climb in and out of its crib with ease. The baby even leaves a rag doll on the stairs to try to trip up the father. Hardly anyone believes Mei-hsun when she claims something is seriously wrong, including her husband, who is out of town working most of the time. Mei-hsun is finally able to break through to her superstitious nanny Mrs. Chou (Ou-Yang Sha Fei) and the two take the baby to a temple so some monks can perform an exorcism. Stuff flies around the room, but nothing really seems to change much.

The premise deals with post traumatic stress and post partum depression, the fears of a first time mother that she won't be able to connect with her child and other female / mother centered issues in an insightful and interesting way... for the first hour. And then something unfortunate happens: during the final 30 minutes the evil baby angle is dropped completely, a mysterious psycho killer is introduced and it suddenly becomes a complete rip-off of HALLOWEEN (1978)! And by complete rip-off, I mean complete rip-off. How does it copy John Carpenter's classic? Let me count the ways. For starters, the film steals snippets of the famous score and the killer is seen mostly in shadow or from a distance. Remember the closet scene where Jamie Lee Curtis jabs a clothes hanger into Michael's eye after he busts in through the door? Yep, that's here. Remember when Michael slowly rises behind JLC when he should be dead? Yep, that's here, too. Remember JLC banging on the door for a child to let her in as Michael slowly approaches? Check! Or Michael hiding in the back seat of a car to surprise someone with a knife? Yup. Or Michael strangling JLC when Donald Pleasance shows up and shoots him? Uh huh. If that's not enough, the female is dressed identically to JLC with the light blue blouse (which also gets ripped on the shoulder!) and dark blue pants!

I was reminded of another Hong Kong film called BREAKOUT FROM OPPRESSION while marveling at this ending. Breakout (which is erroneously listed as being from 1978 everywhere online but is obviously from the early 80s) is what some refer to as a 'psycho bitch' movie. Those movies usually center around a nutty female who goes out of her way to make a man's life a living hell after she's been scorned or her love isn't reciprocated. Think Play Misty for Me or Fatal Attraction. Breakout went that route before suddenly ripping off the ending of FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980). But at least in that film's defense, the ripping off came in the final five minutes and is at least worked into the storyline. In this film it is abrupt, random and basically ruins what had come before it. A twist at the very end tries to justify it all, but I wasn't buying it. Aside from the Halloween, you'll notice one moment clearly lifted from The Omen and the entire soundtrack was stolen from other films, including the use of Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells" from The Exorcist.

All that said, I'd be lying if I didn't admit that this movie had me intrigued the entire time for one reason or another. The first hour is very solid, the acting is good and the film effectively builds suspense throughout. I was even enjoying the slasher-style scenes before noticing they were more than just influenced by Halloween, but complete ripped off from that film (which didn't become completely obvious to me until the last 10 minutes or so). Hell, in a strange way, I enjoyed this more than most of Halloween's official sequels. There's also a clip from Horror Express seen on a TV set and a nightclub act where the female singer belittles an ex-boyfriend in song ("You're just a little centipede ... I'd rather marry a dog than you.")

There is next to no information about Devil Returns anywhere online (including no IMDb listing as of this writing) but I can see why it didn't receive much of a release here in the States (*cough* plagiarism *cough* copyright *cough*). A VCD was however sold through Ocean Shores for a short time. The cast also includes Don Wong Tao as a detective and Joan Lin Feng Chiao, who is married to superstar Jackie Chan.

★★1/2