I have often commented that I sometimes worry that someday I may hit the bottom of the well, that nothing strange will exist any longer in film to delight me. That said, thanks to movies like this, which I didn't even know existed until Arrow Video was kind enough to send me a copy, prove to me that there will always be something odder, stranger and more screwed up to watch.

Teruo Ishii made movies like Yakuza Law and Horrors of Malformed Men, but this was the sixth in his series of abnormal love movies. It's all about the high demand for tattooed geishas and the rivalry that builds between two highly skilled masters of tattoo.

Unable to repay a local lender, Yumi is serving as a kept woman for two years, but soon learns that this is a house of pain, not pleasure. From the moment this movie begins, there's a shocking amount of violence displayed. But the main reason to stick around is that there is so much incredible tattoo art on display, as the women's bodies become the space where war is declared between the two artists. And when the madam learns that one of them, Horihide, has noble intentions, she plans on making everyone pay.

There's a scene in this movie where a geisha has glow in the dark tattoos that come to neon life the drunker she gets on sake. For that alone, this is totally worth a watch.

Ishii made two other movies before this that are in the same genre, Shogun's Joy of Torture and Orgies of Edo. From most accounts, he went way beyond the bounds making this one, depicting Japan's Edo period in perhaps the most perverse - and one assumes, crowd pleasing - ways possible.

WARNING: This review might have some spoilers, but feel free to read this as it doesn't give away an ending spoiler. Also this is my first review after getting signed up on IMDb ;-) "Inferno of Torture" is a Horror movie, directed by Teruo Ishii 1969. It was produced by the great Toei Company.

Telling short about this 94-minute long film, it takes place in the Edo-period, and centers around a bounce of geisha-like ladies who gets tattooed, only to find out later in the film that they are to be sold as sex slaves for foreigners. Will these ladies ever get to be saved at the end...? Find out by yourself...:-P This film isn't as fully brutal and gory as "The Joy of Torture" which Teruo Ishii and Toei made one year earlier, being 1968. But still "Inferno of torture" is very strong in content as it contains some whipping, several fight scenes, and not at least a nude cat-fight on a boat.

As I said earlier, I'm not gonna give away the ending. But I can tell you that this ending is very spectacular, and very different from most of the old Japanese movies I have seen, and thus one of the BEST endings I have seen in this type of films.

After all I totally liked this movie, together with other works like "The Joy of Torture", "Yakuza's Law" and "Orgies of Edo". Liked the plot in it, as well as the strong content itself. Also I have watched this two times online.

Sadly, this film is not available in Norway where I live, where it would have guaranteed have gotten an 18 rating. I mean, if this film is/were to be released here, I would guaranteed have got it on DVD for a long time ago...Trust me, I world promise you that...!

I would never have thought that a film with so many bare breasts in it could fail to keep my attention; I guess you CAN have too much of a good thing.

Judging by the opening credits scenes, I figured this would be a hugely entertaining piece of gory sleaze: a woman tied to a cross has a spear thrust between her legs (freeze frame on blood gushing freely),the point emerging from her chest; and another victim, buried up to her neck, gets her head sawn off (more gushing blood). Bloody stuff indeed!

The film then starts proper, with a woman, Yumi (Yumiko Katayama),digging up the grave of a man called Genzo (Shin'ichirô Hayashi),and cutting open the corpse to find a key, which she needs to open her chastity belt. We then flash back to see how poverty stricken Yumi joined a brothel operated by madam Otatsu (Mieko Fujimoto) and her sadistic lackey Samejima (Haruo Tanaka),only to discover too late that the women there are tattooed and tortured, and then sold into slavery to a businessman called Clayton (Yusuf Hoffman).

Much of the plot focusses on the rivalry of two tattoo artists, Horihide (Teruo Yoshida) and Horitatsu (Asao Koike),and on the romantic relationship between Horihide and Osuzu (Masumi Tachibana),and this is where my mind started to wander. The film became extremely repetitive, with an endless succession of tattooing and topless nudity. One particular moment, where the two artists' work is judged by a dignitary, consists of a parade of tits and tattoos that seems to go on forever. Any film that can make me bored of boobs is doing something wrong.

Furthermore, considering the title, the film is actually fairly light on the torture, with some shibari (Japanese rope bondage),a little hot wax action, and a woman having her eyes poked out, but it's not until the very end that director Teruo Ishii delivers anything as brutal as that seen at the beginning. The final scene sees madam Otatsu tied between two trees that have been bent over and secured by ropes; when the ropes are cut, the woman is torn in half (a method of execution also used in the 1932 classic Tarzan The Ape Man and in Ruggero Deodato's Cut and Run).

5.5/10, rounded down for those dogs strung up in the market scene, the poor pups clearly destined for the cooking pot.