Madame O Is Available on DVD

Early SM pink film, Top Secret:  Women's Torture

One of the many early Tani Naomi films I'd like to know more about is Top Secret: Women's Torture (aka Absolutely Secret: Girl Torture; aka 極秘--女拷問 Gokuhi: Onna Gōmon).

This is an early SM pink film (i.e., made outside the studio system). It came out in 1968 and although it was distributed by Shin-Toho, it was produced by Koei, one of the scads of pink production companies that came and went back in the day. The director was Komori Kyoshi.

I like the Wikipedia synopsis:

Set in the Edo Era, the film opens with a group of women being convicted of various crimes. The rest of the film is given to graphic depiction of the tortures the women endure as part of their sentences.

Gotta love a film like that. Doesn't waste time getting to what's really important. Too bad it's not available.

Or is it?

A Google search turns up a number of torrent sites claiming a DVD rip. Only problem is, I doubt this film ever came out on DVD. So I don't know what they're talking about. Anyway, I don't do torrents.

So, while plenty of people seem to know about this film, it appears to be another one of many SM pink films that is impossible to get hold of today.

The fact that it came out so long ago doesn't help matters. But as I was doing further research into this flick, I came across another Tani movie that came out a year earlier, this one called Madame O (aka Vicious Doctor Pt. 2; aka 続悪徳医--女医篇 Zoku Akutokui: Joi-hen).

There was another movie with Tani which also came out in 1967 (Akutokui) with the same director (Fukuda Seiichi), so I guess that was Part I.

Now here's the interesting thing: Part II is available on DVD from Synapse Films. There are a number of Japanese sites offering the DVD but it's either been subtitled or dubbed (can't remember which). Does that mean if a Japanese person were to order this film, he'd only be able to get it with English subs or spoken in English? Wild.

I wish Synapse had looked around for Top Secret: Women's Torture instead of this one but they seem to prefer horror to bondage and from what I can tell from the preview, Madame O doesn't look like a bondage film.

Here's the link to the YouTube preview. I'm not going to embed it. It's got some titties in it so no telling how long before it gets deleted.

This film stars Aoyama Michiko. She goes back a long way. It appears her first four films were for Nikkatsu, starting in 1956. After that, she appeared in many independent films.

I'm not sure how much of a role Tani Naomi had in this film. There was only one part in the preview that might have shown her, but it's hard to say. Sometimes it looks like her, sometimes it doesn't.

It dawns on me that I'm really not sure in which film Tani first appeared naked and bound. Carnal Punishment from 1967 looks like a good candidate. In fact, she made several films in 1967 (the year she debuted as an actress) that look like good candidates. She found her niche early on.