Belladonna of Sadness

Belladonna of Sadness (1973) is an adult Japanese animated film you can watch online on iFILM. Director Eiichi Yamamoto made it at Mushi Production, drawing on Jules Michelet's study of medieval witchcraft. In a French village, a peasant named Jeanne is assaulted by the local lord on her wedding night.

Cast out and broken, Jeanne strikes a bargain with the devil and gains a power the whole region comes to fear. The film barely "moves" in the usual sense — the camera glides across long watercolor panels, like someone unrolling an illustrated scroll. Tatsuya Nakadai voices the devil. Masahiko Satoh scored it with psychedelic jazz-rock.

This is the third and wildest entry in Mushi's Animerama trilogy, after A Thousand and One Nights and Cleopatra. It flopped on release and was nearly lost for decades until a restoration brought it back to theaters. Not a film for everyone — eroticism, violence and feminist fury rendered as pure visual delirium. Stream Belladonna of Sadness online on iFILM.