Belladonna of sadness

Phallus In Wonderland

RELEASED 26 JUNE 1973 | 18 | Blu-ray Director Eiichi Yamamoto Cast Aiko Nagayama, Tatsuya Nakadai, Katsutaka Ito, Masaya Takahashi

First released in Japan in 1973, this unbelievable film is nothing like commercial anime. It feels more like an X-rated Jackanory crossed with a concept album.

Its simple, subversive tale is largely told through still drawings, often scrolling across the screen, and a folk rock soundtrack. In Europe in the Middle Ages, a peasant woman is raped by the monstrous local nobility. Then she’s seduced by a phallus-shaped Satan, which liberates her soul.

It’s an utterly arthouse, often ludicrous film that will leave seekers of anime exploitation bored and baffled. However, Belladonna is fascinating as a radical arty alternative to the raucous adult toons of Ralph Bakshi (Fritz The Cat, Heavy Traffic). Even if you’re on its wavelength, you may find it turgid at times, though it goes truly mad in its second half, with figures overlaid on satanic sex odysseys and an apocalyptic plague.

The film has feminist ambitions, though it’s a brand of feminism some colleges would no-platform today. There’s a stylised but horrific rape early on, and later the heroine is “liberated” by the hyper-masculine Satan. He can be viewed as part of the woman’s psyche, but he still makes the film a penis-obsessed phantasmagoria – one written and directed by men. Still, if you want a wild pop art vision that could have been made to educate the children of Summerisle in The Wicker Man, then check it out.

Extras Interviews with the director, the art director and the composer. You also get six art cards and a booklet.

Tatsuya Nakadai, who voices the penile Satan, also played the King Lear figure in Akira Kurosawa’s epic Ran.