In the Realm of the Senses Review by Royce Icon
I can’t tell you how many times I saw this movie in the video store, picked it up, and then decided not to rent it. I did this probably dozens of times. I think the main reason was that I just kind of assumed that it would be a fluffy drama for some reason, due to the title. Well, as they say, assumption is the mother of all fuck ups.
In the Realm of the Senses couldn’t be farther from a fluffy drama. In fact, there is quite a lot of reason that it is one of the most infamously banned films in the world, and is still considered extreme in Japan, even by modern standards.
The film was one of the original films about the famous prostitute Sada who castrated a lover because she felt he was going to leave her. Mostly the film is intense fucking with lots of closeups of the main male character’s little brown potato dick, but it’s still pretty interesting. The ending is probably the coolest part, as well as the old lady being fucked.
It does get boring after awhile, and it could have been edited down to a better hour or honestly half an hour long film, but as it stands it is worth watching if only for historical context, and because it’s pretty damn extreme for the early seventies. It’s not a film I’ll watch over and over, but I consider it a necessary film to watch for sure.