Thanks for the memories!

Best movie of this year hands down!

A Masterpiece!

It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

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...!

A film about obsessions on bondage and tattoos, disguised as historically adequate treatment of an inglorious episode in Japans long gone past. It's ingredients are violence, brothels, tattoos, female whorehouse bosses, tattoos, mean pimps, even meaner prostitutes, tattoos, whips, knives, drugs, torture and tattoos. The main theme is the transformation of young girls' skins into pieces of art, depicting both abstract and figurative motives, the latter mainly dealing with death, birth, violence and other more or less disturbing themes. Compared to other far eastern films from the same exploitation category, the violence seems almost moderate. The narration, in a fairytale-like old fashioned style, is, of course, a child of it's time. In total, the film's not so good, but not so bad either; it is not very original, but still (in a positive sense) light years away from the commercial cinema we have today – which is intriguing since films like this, in their days, were themselves first and foremost done to make money.

First off - I believe that the other reviewers on this page are reviewing SPLIT OXEN TORTURE, which is neither part of the "true" JOYS OF TORTURE series - it's actually an unofficial sequel - nor is it directed by Teruo Ishii. That film (directed in 1976 by Yuuji Makiguchi) has it's own IMDb page under the title TOKUGAWA ONNA KEIBATSU-EMAKI: USHI-ZAKI NO KEI. INFERNO is not the "gore" film that SPLIT OXEN is - though Makiguchi's film is very good as well - and is honestly better than any of the Ishii-directed JOT films that I've seen so far. In fact - INFERNO was far too weak on gore to be truly memorable to me, and was actually very dull at points...The story-line revolves around two tattoo artists who are vying for the attention of the Emperor. Jealousy and the love of a young concubine get between the rival artists and causes problems for all involved...Unfortunately - there's just not nearly enough torture in INFERNO to be all that joyful. I was hoping for a little "rougher" content - and this one didn't really deliver. The story-line was decent enough - but it tended to drag quite a bit after the first third of the film or so, and only picked up slightly towards the end. The very last scene of the film was decent, but not enough to save it overall. Worth a look to Japanese exploit fans, but don't expect too much out of it...6/10

Whatever happened to storytelling? That's the question that I was left asking myself after wasting time watching this movie. Yes, the gore scenes are plenty and creative, but the problem is that not once can you feel any kind of sympathy for people you don't know anything about. The so-called "love story" is a rushed into the first 2 minutes of the film and does nothing to help character development. The film shows absolutely nothing worth watching, even as a gore-hound I was left not caring that much about the torture scenes. This movie gave me no reason to care about any of it's characters of their story, it just relied on gore to shock me and I found that cheap and got more angry about losing precious time on this than on the gore itself. This movie is about torture, torture of it's audience that is.