BELLADONNA OF SADNESS Official Red Band Trailer

BELLADONNA OF SADNESS (KANASHIMI NO BELLADONNA) Animation, 1973, Cinelicious Pics, 89 min. , Japan. One of the great lost masterpieces of Japanese animation, never before officially released in the U. S., BELLADONNA OF SADNESS is a mad, swirling, psychedelic lightshow of medieval tarotcard imagery with horned demons, haunted forests and La Belle Dame Sans Merci, equal parts Tolkien and gorgeous, explicit Gustav Klimtinfluenced eroticism. The last film in the adultthemed Animerama trilogy produced by the godfather of Japanese anime manga, Osamu Tezuka and directed by his long time collaborator Eiichi Yamamoto (ASTRO BOY and KIMBA THE WHITE LION), BELLADONNA unfolds as a series of spectacular still watercolor paintings that bleed and twist together. An innocent young woman, Jeanne (voiced by Aiko Nagayama) is violently raped by the local lord on her wedding night. To take revenge, she makes a pact with the Devil himself (voiced by Tatsuya Nakadai, from Akira Kurosawas RAN) who appears as an er