Sometimes, I question the necessity of importing certain foreign films stateside. While Central Park Media’s Asia Pulp Cinema division certainly has its heart in the right place, sometimes I just wonder what they may be thinking. Some of their releases have been pleasantly surprising (Beautiful Weapon), but others have just made me shake my head in disbelief (Zero Woman). The worst offenders seem to be the action films: in a country already saturated with lame summer vehicles and bargain bins stuffed to the brim with movies "starring" The Boz, do we really need to look overseas for more inept blow-shit-up movies?

That was my initial impression of The Bondage Master after reading its amazingly goofy synopsis, which proclaims "SHIRO is a BONDAGE MASTER of EXQUISITE SKILL." Someone got a little Caps lock happy down at Central Park Media, also squealing (if a typeface could be considered as doing such) "A SHOCKING TALE of LUST...INTRIGUE...and MURDER!" I silently cursed Lawrence under my breath, and threw it in bracing myself for the worst.

Well, color me cheerfully mauve. While The Bondage Master is by no means a good film (it’s pretty awful, actually), I caught myself inexplicably tangled up in its ropy web of kinky bondage, ridiculous characters, and odd splashes of asinine comedy.

As explained to us in ALL CAPS, our hero of the movie is a Bondage Master named Shiro. Any time a whimpering Japanese woman needs to be tied up for a photo shoot or in a seedy club, he’s the go-to guy (perhaps because of his EXQUISITE SKILL?), with his trusty length of rope not far behind. Joining Shiro on his journey (of LUST...INTRIGUE...AND MURDER!) are the dominatrix Rumi and his obnoxious comic-relief buddy Hitoshi. Besides being a general pain-in-the-ass, Hitoshi also idolizes Shiro and his bondage technique (maybe because it’s EXQUISITE?), trying desperately to emulate Shiro but failing miserably with "wacky" results. One night, Shiro attempts to stop a gang of street punks from mugging a young lady named Keiko (with stinging barbs like "Go home and do your homework!" Ouch.), who is on the lookout for her younger sister Saya. Saya ran away form home and was drawn into the seedy underworld of the bondage scene (small world, huh?), and Keiko wants to find her so that Saya can visit her dying mother. Unfortunately, Saya got dumped by a higher-up in the Blue Dragons gang (who looks like an Asian Luis Guzman) and decided to run off with a rather...large...amount of coke for revenge. In a series of unfortunate coincidences, Saya is killed by the Blue Dragons whilst tied up in the style employed by Shiro, implicating him in her murder. Unfortunately, the Blue Dragons kidnap Saya’s sister Keiko (oooh, those wily yakuza!) in order to get their cocaine supply back from the unfortunately ignorant Shiro.

Of course, my Japanese Weirdness Meter, already pretty high, is suddenly slammed into the red when Shiro, Rumi, and Hitoshi hatch a plan to rescue Keiko and bring the villainous Blue Dragons to justice. This involves dumping pounds of cocaine all over the yakuza members (somewhere Robert Downey Jr. is crying), S&M duels, and Shiro suddenly turning into Indiana Jones and snapping his rope around like a hemp whip, strangling the gang members with his EXQUISITE SK--okay, I’ll stop.

As I said before, The Bondage Master is by no means a good film. The dialogue is silly, characters are drawn in cartoony strokes, and the pacing is amazingly uneven. However, I found myself completely engrossed in the absurdity of it all. Between the bad porno-style music, kinky pleasures, and overall weirdness of it, the movie had that very nice "is it over already?" feel at its sitcom-style conclusion that’s the earmark of goofy entertainment.

As usual, Central Park Media does a pretty decent job with their source material. Despite its TV-movie production values, the print looks pretty nice, with even (albeit faded) colors, and a minimum of artifacting. The dialogue was very clear (even in the painfully awful English dubbing track), and music piped through loud and clear. Extras include a still gallery (set to that Skinemax-grade muzak) and a handful of trailers for Asia Pulp Cinema’s saucy offerings, including the ridiculously-titled Big Boobs Buster and the absurd softcore "tribute" Terminatrix. Hoo boy.

Certainly not the serious thriller the box copy makes it out to be, The Bondage Master is no less enjoyable for its sheer silliness. It’s got fetish kinkiness for us perverts (not that much, however. Put it away.), some oddly likable characters, and that overall tone that reinforces my theory that the Japanese are completely insane. Score your copy from Asia Pulp Cinema if you find yourself INTRIGUED by this SHOCKING TALE!

Sorry. Sometimes I can’t help myself.