Overview: From the outrageous imagination of cult director Teruo Ishii (Orgies of Edo, Horrors of Malformed Men) comes this infamous omnibus of three shocking tales of crime and punishment based on true-life documented cases set during the reign of the Tokugawa shogunate.

The first tale sees the beautiful Mitsu (Masumi Tachibana) going to horrifying lengths to tend to her older brother Shinz (Teruo Yoshida), a carpenter injured in a work accident, but the law catches up on them and metes out a terrifying retribution after they violate the ultimate taboo.

In the second, unfettered passions in a Buddhist nunnery are not allowed to go unpunished after abbess Reih (Yukie Kagawa) and her attendant Rintoku (Naomi Shiraishi) encounter a virile young monk from a neighboring temple.

In the closing segment, a sadistic torturer (Fumio Watanabe) attempts to show a tattoo artist (Asao Koike) how to depict convincing expressions of faces of pain in his work by allowing him to sketch a selection of Europeans as they are tortured for entering Japan with the aim of spreading Christianity.

Blu-ray Verdict: In truth, Teruo Ishii may never be regarded in the same exalted terms as fellow Japanese cult heroes like Norifumi Suzuki or Koji Wakamatsu (though to be fair much of his work remains pretty rare), but he was certainly no slouch, and was a solid and stylish contributor to many genres.

'The Joy of Torture' is probably the best I've seen from him so far, the start of his eight strong ero guro series. An anthology film indicting Edo era savagery, while not especially graphic its a classy and even moving work with some memorable scenes.

The first story is the weakest of the three, seeing a woman driven to desperation and aberrant love by her injured brother. Interesting enough, but (for me, at least), a little underdeveloped, it's a set up that would have benefited from a full length treatment.

Or, at the very least, greater levels of emotional intensity where high melodrama should have been the style, but its actually relatively subdued.

Still good stuff though and its theme of love binding characters to their doom leads nicely into the next story, a tale of nuns driven wild with lust for a neighboring monk!

This one really ups the ante, with escalating hysteria mounting into interesting torture scenes and bloodshed, including a hilarious use of loaches.

However, the best is truly saved until last though, where a dedicated tattoo artist seeks to create his finest work by watching the torture of Christian missionaries.

This segment combines interesting obsession with the most protracted torture scenes of the film, lots of beating, wheeling, burning and so forth of a multitude of screaming semi naked ladies to unsettling, yet undeniably erotic effect!

Plus the ending is (relatively speaking) pretty upbeat. So its a decent mix, but at the same time somewhat flawed. Some inconsistencies nag, most notably the aforementioned slightly flat opening story.

The film is thematically inconsistent too, flitting from the tragedy of love to the mania of excess to the excess of torture, taking in the harshness of social strictures, cruelty of individuals and passion of torture along the way.

Although the stories are united by recurring torturer Nambara and his (relatively) nice guy assistant, there's a slightly scattershot feel to the general critique that detracts from the overall effect.

The social justification is a tad cheesy as well, which wouldn't be a bad thing, but the film is exploitative enough to seem hypocritical while not exploitative enough to be hilarious in having higher pretensions.

There isn't much gore either, but then its still fairly strong for its time. Altogether still a very worthy film chock full of nudity, nastiness, solid plotting and beautiful cinematography, it's definitely worth a watch for vintage Japanese exploitation fans. This is a Widescreen Presentation (1.85:1) enhanced for 16x9 TVs and comes with the Special Features of:

High Definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation
Original uncompressed mono PCM audio
Optional English subtitles
Audio commentary by Japanese cinema expert Tom Mes
Teruo Ishii: Erotic-Grotesque Maestro an exclusively newly filmed interview with the author Patrick Macias
Bind, Torture, Thrill author and critic Jasper Sharp discusses the history of torture in Japanese exploitation cinema
Original trailer
Image gallery
Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Jacob Phillips
+ FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collectors booklet featuring new writing on the film by Mark Schilling