L'empire du vice

So this is a film I had never heard of, one of the very small number of big-budget, period costumed, beautifully filmed and acted hardcore Japanese movies of the seventies and eighties, the most famous example of which being Ai No Corrida, which remains the best by some margin, having never been bettered to this day.

This one falls some way short of that peak, but still has a comparable charm and eerie power to many other mainstream Japanese movies of the time, the story of a mad tattoo artist, the courtesan he bewitches, and the second one who attempts to run away to America with her dead lover's ghost in her knee. Yes, you read that right.

The problem is, like most of Takechi's other later films, this one was cut by the censor to the point of meaninglessness: there is a great deal of nakedness on display but everything below the waist is covered throughout by huge floating pink clouds, often obscuring half of the screen, which means whatever the camera is trying communicate and to focus our attention most strongly on is simply not there at all throughout, and so the entire point, meaning and power of the film is largely ruined. I don't believe a fully-intact uncensored version is available anywhere at present, which is a great pity, as this is an incredibly rare example of a genre of Japanese film of which there may only be a dozen or so others ever made, and it has enough character, originality and weirdness of its own to be watched, valued and preserved.