ORGIES OF EDO

Legendary Toei director Teruo Ishii tells three stories of moral sickness set during Japan’s prosperous Genroku era of antiquity in this bloody entry in Toei’s “abnormal love” film series.

Combining period film detail with carnivalesque grotesquerie, Ishii here creates his own particular vision of love and sex. This landmark ero-guro allowed the filmmaker to experiment with elements that would later show up in his masterpieces HORRORS OF MALFORMED MEN and BLIND WOMAN’S CURSE, including the participation of sideshow performers and butoh dancer Tatsumi Hijikata.

Told in anthology style by an impassive physician, the first story follows an innocent young girl deceived by a handsome yakuza. The second is about the daughter of a rich merchant whose insatiable appetite for filth and perversion draws her deeper into violence, darkness and betrayal. The finale follows a sadistic lord whose eye is caught one day by a beautiful harem girl who shares his strange taste for pain and blood, but who holds a secret of her own that will destroy his entire household.