Yukino (Naomi Tani) is stuck working in a bathhouse (AKA brothel) because of her utterly worthless and downright evil husband Toriyama (Kôji Fujiyama). Things only get worse when her younger sister Mayumi (Misa Ohara) shows up to live with the couple and even worser than that, Yukino reveals to her dirtbag hubbie that she is pregnant. Toriyama decides that it’s easier to just kill his wife and wall her up in the cellar than it is to not be a garbage person. Now that he’s free to run the bathhouse, he thinks he’s got it made. Luckily, Yukino’s ghost comes back and wrecks shit.

Leave it to Toei Company to make a film that is as fun to watch as it is miserable to sit through. Their knack at combining a hyper-stylized feast for the eyes with depressing subject matter into the same film is actually pretty amazing. The eye-popping supernatural (and very bloody) shenanigans and bawdy comedy are welcome breaks from the rape and torture Yukino and Mayumi go through. They dare to dream beyond a life of sex work and the shitty male-dominated society they find themselves in bends over backwards to keep them in their place. Ugh, I need a drink.

While he’s normally credited as a producer, Hiroshi Babauchi composed some wild music for this film with some crazy synthesizer freakouts paired with jazzy drums. So yeah, my eyes and ears are happy, but my mind is not. A Haunted Turkish Bathhouse (1975) is a rough beauty. Sort of, kind of recommended, I guess. While the fiery finale of this film gave me some Suspiria (1977) vibes, I still prefer director Kazuhiko Yamaguchi’s less rapey trash classic Wolf Guy, released the same year.

The print for A Haunted Turkish Bathhouse was either in perfect shape when they scanned it, or Mondo Macabro did some black magic to make this film look and sound absolutely stunning on this release. And, as usual, Mondo gives the folks at home a whole mess of cool content to go through on a disc! The always reliable film critic Samm Deighan does an excellent audio commentary. There are two featurettes with author Patrick Macias discussing Toei horror and exploitation films from this era. You’ll come away with a whole lot of info on Toei Company and you can tell your friends that you went to film school. It won’t be true, but who doesn’t lie to their friends?