Onna jigoku: Mori wa nureta

An astonishingly uncompromising film that begins innocently enough (or seems to) and descends (or ascends, depending on your viewpoint) to truly Sadean levels of depravity, with much glee. It appears that a wrongly accused young girl is being rescued by a pair of wealthy hoteliers but not so. Hatsuo Yamaya plays the husband and main man and it is such a ferocious performance. The wife and two housemaids are at the whim of this cruel man. I say 'cruel' but everybody seems to enjoy everything so maybe not. Anyway one of his little party pieces after dinner is to hoist the three women's garments up over their heads and then when they are bare bottomed give them a little scratch or cut with a knife from the table. This is nothing to what goes on in a wild sexual melee which takes up the last quarter of the film. I have used the word 'uncompromising' but in fact during the sex and violence scenes, so annoyed was the director with the censor's insistence on not showing pubic hair, that he creates great big black boxes on the screen to more than cover any offending glimpse but also to let it be known how stupid he feels the censorship to be. Indeed with the degree of s&v on display the prohibition on pubic hair does seem vaguely ridiculous.