Arrow Video is a bit premature bringing out the conclusion of Teruo Ishii's "Joys of Torture" series with their Blu-ray of INFERNO OF TORTURE.

After a prologue in which prostitute Yumi (JOHNNY SOKKO AND HIS FLYING ROBOT's Yumiko Katayama) desecrates a corpse in a graveyard, we flash back to learn her womanhood was "locked away" as purchased by Lord Sakemima (Haruo Tanaka, IKIRU) to pay the debts of her dying mother, only to learn that her servitude is in the geisha house of madam Oryu (Mieko Fujimoto, SAVAGE WOLF PACK) which caters to sadistic clients and uses escaped female prisoners who have nowhere else to go. The women also serve as canvases for tattoo artists Horihide (Teruo Yoshida, GOKE: BODYSNATCHER FROM HELL) and Horitatsu (Asao Koike, THRONE OF BLOOD) who are in competition to be the successor of their dying mentor, with the winner being decided in an exhibition of the tattoos to the local shogun and the winner being rewarded with the hand in marriage of their master's daughter Osuzu (Masumi Tachibana, TOKYO BAD GIRLS) who loves Horihide but unwilling to defy her father's dying wish. When Oryu discovers her henchman Genzô (Shin'ichirô Hayashi, SEX & FURY) raping Yumi, she tortures them both and comes up with a punishment to render Yumi worthless as a woman. Oryu becomes frustrated with Horihide who seems to be making no progress in his tattooing of the girls, and finds a new use for Yumi when the more obliging Horitatsu desires an exquisite canvas for his masterpiece; however, Horihide reveals he has a another trick under his sleeve when Yumi is unveiled at the shogun exhibition. Samejima and Oryu then offer Horitatsu a way of winning Osuzu by framing Horihide for murder, sending him into exile; however, when visiting brothel owner Clayton (Yusuf Hoffman) expresses an interest in tattooed virgins, Osuzu's fate changes once again and escaped Horihide comes up with a way to wreak vengeance upon all who have wronged him by way of Clayton's virginal daughter (Honey Lane).

Beginning in the styles of the previous three "Joys of Torture" films ORGIES OF EDO and YAKUZA LAW, and SHOGUN'S JOYSOF TORTURE, Teruo Ishii's INFERNO OF TORTURE with an unrelated credits sequence depicting atrocious acts of violence featuring characters not present in the body of the film but soon departs from the omnibus format of the previous entries; instead splitting the film in between two storylines featuring the same characters with a different emphasis in each half. The film revels in the usual displays of half-undraped women and extended scenes of rope bondage; however, it feels padded and drawn out to the point of boredom as it attempts to split the running time between two storylines. The violence within the film is nowhere near as unpleasant as the opening and closing sequence vignettes – the latter anticipating a gag utilized by Ruggero Deodato and Lucio Fulci in two of their latter day works – and the dramatic aspects of the story feel shopworn. Ishii's strengths lie in the more bizarre touches like the climactic fluorescent tattoo exhibition, but this film feels rather minor in spite of the incendiary title and perhaps explains why Ishii moved to Nikkatsu where he could better indulge his tastes with films like BLIND WOMAN'S CURSE.

Unreleased in the United States theatrically or on home video, the film was popular enough in France and Germany theatrically to merit home video and DVD releases – the latter all utilizing Japan's NTSC master converted to PAL (with the Dutch release actually including English subtitles) – but Arrow Video's dual-territory 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.35:1 widescreen Blu-ray provides wider availability to a film of a film some may have only known of through reference books. The colors pop from the opening bloodshed and the stained glass of the brothel to the vivid Dayglo tattoos of the climax. The Japanese LPCM 2.0 mono track is clear enough that the soundtrack's piercing screams may be more effective than the onscreen violence in raising goosebumps. Optional English subtitles are included.

The film is accompanied by an audio commentary by Japanese cinema expert Tom Mes who seems to be under the impression that Arrow have released the "Joys of Torture" series in chronological order (although SHOGUN'S JOYS OF TORTURE is not due out until February 2021). He questions whether the film portrays misogyny or wallows in it, noting that an assistant director on the film complained about its content and Ishii's treatment of the actresses to the studio and the letter caused a media storm with critics charging that Ishii and the studios were debasing Japanese cinema and forcing respectable actors to seek shelter in television; although both Ishii and Mes suggest that the issue of misogyny was industry-wide, with Mes' example being how the studio starved former child actress Tachibana of work to convince her to take roles in the films like INFERNO OF TORTURE (which Mes notes was not classified as part of a "Joys of Torture" series until later, having been at the time considered part of the "Abnormal Love Line" of films which featured Toei films directed by filmmakers other than Ishii). Mes also suggests that a "branding issue" was responsible for Nikkatsu getting the credit with their "Roman Porno" films for revolutionizing the genre even though Toei's "Pink Violence" films preceded them.