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Reviewed by:
Ian Jane on November 2, 2007.

Never before released on home video in North America (or on DVD in Japan ), the first film in the Legends Of The Poisonous Seductress trilogy stars Junko Miyazono as Ohyaku. Poor Ohyaku has had a rough life. Her mother was a prostitute who tried to kill them both and the suicide attempt left the otherwise beautiful girl with a nasty scar along her back. Now grown, Ohyaku works as a performer, making her living walking across tight ropes for the amusement of the male crowd who gather to watch. 

The local magistrate, Sengoku, takes a liking to her and wants Ohyaku as his own but she refuses. Thankfully when things get rough, a young samurai named Shinsuke comes to her aid. She becomes instantly smitten with him and after they make love he refers to her as wife, the two are obviously quite in love. How unfortunate then that Sengoku’s plan to steal a shipment of gold headed towards the mint gets blamed on Shinsuke and some of his comrades. Shinsuke and Ohyaku are captured, he gets decapitated and she gets sent to a prison colony to work in the mines of Sado Island . Before she’s sent away, however, Ohyaku swears she’ll get revenge.

Once at the penal colony, she begrudgingly befriends a burly man known as Bunzo The Iron Barbarian. He shows her the ropes and helps her out in the mine but soon the warden and his wife decide they can probably sell Ohyaku as a concubine and so they take her out of the general population and clean her up a bit. Oman , the wife, takes an instant liking to her and asks to tattoo her back. Ohyaku agrees and over a period of time, Oman inks a demon onto her and once it’s finished, she seduces her. While all of this is going on, however, Ohyaku is planning her escape and when a certain nobleman arrives at the island for a routine inspection, she decides the time has come to make a break for it and exact her revenge.

While Female Demon Ohyaku starts off with a dramatic bang, the next twenty-minutes might leave you wondering what all the fuss is about. That said, don’t let this slow introduction fool you, as once the plot is established and Ohyaku’s motivations made clear, the film kicks into high gear. Granted, there are certainly bloodier and sexier entries in the same genre but when you consider this film was made in 1968 before the whole pinky violence thing really started to take off, this film is strong stuff. The violence is unflinching and the sex is genuinely erotic but it’s all there to further the story. Sure this is exploitation filmmaking but it’s quality exploitation filmmaking! 

Director Yoshihiro Ishikawa might not be as recognizable a name as other Japanese genre directors working around the same time but he had a hand in some very important films. He not only directed this picture but he wrote a few notable Nobuo Nakagawa (who would direct the second and third films in this series) films such as Black Cat Mansion and The Ghost Story Of Yotsuya. Though he didn’t direct a lot of films, with Female Demon Ohyaku he shows a real knack for building tension and for pacing and the film is all the better for it. The last half of the movie definitely pays off with some exciting action scenes and enough sleaze to make viewers stand up and take notice.

At the center of the film is a great performance from Junko Miyazono who, outside of the three films in this series, is probably best known for showing up in Hideo Gosha’s two Samurai Wolf films. While she isn’t an icon the way Reiko Ike and Meiko Kaji are, had she appeared in more films she probably could have become one if her performance in this film is anything to go by. She brings a dark, brooding intensity to her character, which makes her mission of revenge all the more believable. While she’s easy on the eyes, there’s a dangerous streak hiding underneath her pretty features. Seeing her appear alongside Tomisaburo Wakayama (of the Lone Wolf And Cub films, appearing here in a prominent supporting role) in a film as exciting and fun as Female Demon Ohyaku is a treat..

If stylish black and white camerawork, a searing and intense performance from the lead and some crazy and maniacal violence sounds like your idea of a good time, give Legends Of The Poisonous Seductress: Female Demon Ohyaku a shot. The movie is a blast and Synapse has done their typically excellent job on the presentation.

Junko Miyazono, Tomisaburo Wakayama, Kunio Murai, Koji Minawara