Shogun's Sadism (1976) Yûji Makiguchi

Country: Japan | Director: Yûji Makiguchi

Two short stories set in Edo during the Shogun era. 1. During a time when Christians are persecuted vehemently, Iori falls in love with young Christian girl. When she and her family are captured during a raid, his sadistic master takes her as her personal slave to torment him, and tries breaking her spirit by means of rape, torture and pure sadism. After Iori refuses to participate any longer he is exiled, but vows to get her back. 2. When Sutezo is forced to serve the cruel master of a brothel to repay his debts, he becomes friends with the young girl Sato. Together, they escape and try to get by on scams and theft.

Shogun's Sadism (aka Joy of Torture 2: Oxen Split Torture) is a fine addition to your exploitation film collection as it contains a little bit of everything you might want to see--gore, torture, rape, animal cruelty, bestiality (subjective as to whether you want to call the dog licking a naked woman scene "bestiality"), bondage, humiliation, castration, foot-to-the-crotch abortion, and plenty of mean-spirited fun.

The Shogun is a newt-chomping, rape-happy, sadistic tyrant who revels in the torture and degradation of enemies and allies alike. His cruelty knows no limits on screen--even a young girl is caned, blinded via hot iron across the eyes, and then thrown out in the street in one scene. As the shogun picks out and subjugates Christians to vicious acts, one of his own guards is forced to look on as his love interest is put through hell for the shogun's amusement. Very downbeat tale with far out scenes of graphic violence and some nicely done erotic interludes.

The second segment is about a brothel's resident lackey who is in love with an abused whore. When they are found out, they are put to the shogun's standard methods of punishment. Though the tone of this story is lighter and more eroticized than the first one it still ends with the same graphic and tragic results for the protagonists.

I would highly recommend this one to all you cats that love sleaze and exploit films who haven't had the chance to see this yet.