The Sublimely Twisted Madame O Is Out on DVD!

Out this week on DVD is Madame O, a sublimely twisted 1967 Japanese shocker directed by Seiichi Fukuda about a female doctor named Seiko (Michiko Aoyama) with a secret double life. When Seiko was 16, she was raped on the beach by three boys which left her pregnant and infected with syphilis. Still consumed with hatred towards all men, she prowls the streets after work like a prostitute, picking up men and then injecting them with the disease. But when a co-worker of hers, a doctor, discovers her secrets and is nonjudgmental she falls deeply in love with him. But what dark secrets is the doctor hiding? This bizarre film switches back and forth between black and white and color and has some jarring sequences -- most notably one in which Seiko deals with a blackmailer by throwing a pot of boiling tea in his face, conking him over the head repeatedly with a large ceramic mask and then cutting him up with a saw in the bathroom and dissolving his body parts in acid. Yes, it is that weird. Thank god for Synapse who put out this lovingly restored DVD!