Flower and Snake

Flower and Snake (花と蛇, Hana to hebi) aka Flowers and Serpents (1974) is a Japanese soft-core S/M film starring Naomi Tani, directed by Masaru Konuma and produced by Nikkatsu. Based on a novel by Oniroku Dan (b. 1931), Japan's best-known author of S&M fiction, Flower and Snake was the first of Nikkatsu’s Roman Porno films to deal with an S&M theme. Together with the later Wife to be Sacrificed (also directed by Konuma in 1974, and starring the same female and male leads) this film is credited with starting the S&M Roman Porno series which helped save Nikkatsu from collapse during the 1970s. In a very successful effort to avoid bankruptcy, Nikkatsu, Japan's oldest major film studio, had entered the pink film, or soft-core pornography,...