‘Orgies of Edo’ or — This Little Pinky Goes Insane?
“That film gave me nightmares!” my friend David texted me the morning after we’d watched Teruo Ishii’s ‘Orgies of Edo’ (1969).
“But you were squealing with delight when we were watching it.” I replied.
”That’s not the point!”
To be fair to my friend, ‘Orgies of Edo’ would give anyone nightmares but that’s also one of the reasons I loved it. The other is that it’s one of the most visually striking films I’ve seen this year. Combine a serious artistic flair with some inventively transgressive imagery and what’s not to love? Apart from the ghastly violence, sexual insanity, hallucinatory deliriousness and horrific mutilations that is. It’s no wonder my poor friend had crazy dreams.
‘Orgies of Edo’ is a portmanteau movie consisting of three separate tales set during the Genruko period in Japan, a period of prosperity although a prosperity which is covering up a multitude of sins. The first tale concerns a young girl forced into prostitution by a deceptive young man, the second is about a young woman with ravenous sexual appetites that are somewhat… unusual and the third revolves around a sadistic lord and his harem where he discovers a young courtesan with whom he might share a little more in common than an interest in sadomasochism.
The most immediate parallel is to Walerian Borowczyk’s ‘Immoral Tales’ (1973), another film consisting of several stories throbbing with sex, nudity and shocking violence all of which are presented by a fine and discerning artistic eye. The main difference is that ‘Orgies’ has a single character, a doctor, who acts as a linking thread throughout Ishii’s material and providing the pretext of a theme.
I’ll be honest — for the first twenty five minutes or so I was a little underwhelmed by the movie, finding it somewhat interesting but not especially arresting or captivating and consisting a little too much of abuse towards women. Sure, it has some nice flourishes (the “sex scene” looking down through a canopy of drapery is eye-catching and very nicely done) but I knew the film needed an injection of something if it wasn’t going to descend into exploitation tedium. Something had to happen.
And happen it does and big time! The first tale ends with an act of violence that is just horrific and awful, both of us leaping off the sofa and shrieking in disgust but I’ll tell you something, it did the trick as neither of us knew what the hell we were going to be hit with next and ‘Orgies’ hits you with all it has and when rapists sex-dwarves are one of the LEAST shocking things a film has up its sleeve you know you might as well give up trying to second-guess or imagine what bizarre shit you’re going to be witnessing next. I won’t list the litany of grisliness here, partly from not wanting to ruin surprises or your appetite, but let’s just say that an hour or so in there is a scene which might just be the most gloriously bat-shit crazy sequence I’ve seen in 2019. All I’ll mention is that it involves naked women, murderous bulls with flaming horns and demented jazz drum playing. It is outré incarnate. It is jaw-dropping. It might be the best scene I’ve seen this year. I loved it.
But do not despair as the movie is more than just exploitative sleaze although, let’s be honest, it is pretty much is, no matter how you dress it up (this is a Japanese ‘Pinky’ film after all). Again, much like Borowczyk’s work there is the real sense of an artist using the exploitation genre to push through his own artistic visions. There’s too much fierce imagination and genuine skill here to dismiss it simply as trash. The sequence in the sadistic lord’s room of mirrors is a masterstroke of visual flare, both conceptually and in terms of execution, resulting in an image that is still haunting my memory and will for some time to come. It taps into those dreams that bubble away down in our brain stems. Also, Ishii’s use of gold often had me thinking of Paul Schrader’s ‘Mishima’ (1985), another film that taps into the sexual roots of violence.
I was shocked by ‘Orgies of Edo’, shocked at how much I enjoyed it. It does everything I want from a movie like this, namely to hit me with crazy madness in a stylised and bonkers way and this movie most certainly does that. I now need to watch Ishii’s ‘Horrors of Malformed Men’ (1969) which I’ve heard is even crazier. Blimey.
