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Ecstasy of the Angels

Ecstasy of the Angels is a 1972 film from Japan, directed by Kōji Wakamatsu, running 89 minutes. reelscum files it under sexploitation and transgressive & midnight.

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Year
1972 · 1970s films
Country
Japan
Runtime
89 min
Director
Kōji Wakamatsu
Updated
10 Aug 2026
Obscurity
obscure (59/100)
Also known as
Angelic Orgasm

Defined in the glossary: Sexploitation, Transgressive & midnight

Wakamatsu wires the pink film to a detonator and steps back.

Koji Wakamatsu spent the pink-film era smuggling revolution into softcore, and this is where the charge goes off. A radical cell whose members answer to code names like October and Autumn botches a weapons raid, splinters over who to blame, and turns its violence inward while the sex scenes keep the censors fed and the politics keep detonating underneath. Wakamatsu shoots it half in grimy black-and-white and half in sudden colour, closer to a Godard argument than to anything else sharing its double bill. It arrived in 1972 with Japan's actual radical left eating itself in real time, and it carries the queasy authority of something reported from the inside. Not an easy watch, and not pretending to be one.

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