This wintry poster for Hakkinbon bijin ranbu yori: semeru!, aka Beauty’s Exotic Dance: Torture! shows star Junko Miyashita looking miserable and cold. Which actually happens in the movie. It tells the story of an artist who engages a prostitute to satiate his need for sadistic sex, which he uses to fuel his art. The prostitute, Miyashita, is a consensual partner in all this, wanting to please the artist and out-do his dearly departed wife. You gets lots of drawn out sadism involving rope bondage, asphyxiation, ice baths, scaldings with candle wax, and more. And if that isn’t dark and weird enough already, matters take a really nasty turn when Miyashita turns out to have inherited something unusual from her mother. If you watch the movie, don’t say we didn’t warn you. Hakkinbon bijin ranbu yori: semeru! premiered in Japan today in 1977.
When they say love hurts they aren't kidding.