Ranpo jigoku

This film, an adaptation of four (really three) short stories penned by Edogawa Rampo, is unfortunately more stomach-churning than it is stylish. Given the uniform elegance of RAMPO NOIR's composition and design, that makes the ick factor pretty high. After the relative subtlety and effectiveness of the first piece, "Mirror Hell," the ensuing parade of erotic leeches, quadriplegic sex, sadism, mutilation and necrophilia should be enough to put almost anyone off their dinner. Potential viewers, you've been warned. The images, which are beautiful, will stay with you, but they'll probably inspire a queasy stomach more than they will a sense of fascination and horror. Here's hoping it was more palatable on the page.

I also happened to have seen this at the very same Japanese festival in Sydney, and I enjoyed it quite a lot.

These shorts are sick. The writer behind the original stories may have a disturbed and twisted mind for inspiring these disgusting tales of torture and obsession, and love (love which is so alien it doesn't really fit the word).

Of course many stories by Edogawa Rampo have been banned already in Japan for that very same reason.

However, these shorts were great examples of how dark cinema can get. These push right to the boundaries, where sense, reason, and any sort of real point is left behind in its own madness. And it does try to make points. They draw parallels between conscious and subconscious, reality and delusion. The surreal images and narratives destroy the boundaries between the two and the flow freely into each other. The film challenges what art really is. Whether it's a beautiful reflection, a horrific image, or something that is both beautiful on the outside but dead and corroded inside. Here we see that mirrors have the potential to be god, trapping us in its frame. Love is horrific. Horrific. These shorts have the potential to repel you in disgust, or to draw you in and lose yourself in its insanity, and for that reason alone it is a powerful work of art.

The four individual directors obviously had a daunting task ahead of them trying to make this. They had to present these tales honestly, and also visually uncover the madness behind them. I don't know about the former, as I haven't read any of Rampo's stories, however visually these films are amazing too. Especially Mirror Hell, which has amazing shots of the actors constantly reflected in dozens of different mirrors.

You leave the film feeling as if the makers had thrown a lot of violence and sex at you stylishly but with no real substance. The shorts are too surreal and disjointed to follow through with any of the points they try to make. The are no answers to be found in these shorts, and nothing profound to learn or re-learn. However, these shorts were never made with such intentions. They were made to show the madness of Edogawa Rampo. They were made to disgust you, and to provoke you. And they mastered that exceptionally.

Whether you like it or not, you won't forget this one.

Rampo Noir: 4 out of 10: My first though was Zardoz that wacky beyond belief Sean Connery sci-fi film. My second thought was Yoko Ono. Both thoughts along with Johnny Got his Gun and Sherlock Holmes flooded me during the four short stories that make up this J-horror anthology.

First the good news this J-horror is one-hundred percent pasty white ghost free. Yup not an insect screeching wet haired concubine of the damned to be found in any of the pictures. The bad news…. Well let's look at the four pictures.

Mars Canal: 1 out of 10: Naked man in arty picture flashes back at a violent rape while a rare static fills the otherwise mute soundtrack. Yup this was the Yoko picture. Fortunately it's only seven minutes.

Mirror Hell: 6 out of 10: Think Sherlock Holmes but Watson is a dominatrix. Very straight forward narrative and is easily the most accessible of the bunch.

The Caterpillar: 5 out of 10: is the Johnny Got his Gun picture. War hero suffers domineering bride with an over the top amputee fetish. Not as bad as I just made it sound… but close.

Crawling Bugs: 6 out of 10: If this film is ever remade by a Hollywood studio I have two words for the main lead in this segment. Crispin Glover. This tale of obsession over both an actress and the bugs crawling on her skin would make a nifty Showtime Masters of Horror segment. Very arty I could see this both written, directed and starring Mr. Glover who certainly shares the films over the top weirdness.

In fact the whole Rampo Noir movie feels a little like a made for cable anthology series except for the first film that defiantly has NEA grant written all over it. Definitely different but often a little slow and not all that good.

The films have virtually nothing to do with each other in tone and are not strong enough to stand on their own. They do kind of remind me of Zardoz. A film to show your jaded friends who think they have seen everything.

Lengthy anthology of films made from stories by Edogowa Rampo, that all seem to revolve around obsessive love and the consequences of feeling; 'Since I fell in love with you my life has been hell'. First up, 'Mars Canal' comprises a naked man walking across what appears to be a lunar landscape and recalling a naked fight with a lover (?). Not much in this one for me and 'experimental' would probably be the correct tag. Next up, Mirror Hell was a fairly interesting but rather convoluted tale involving mirrors and ladies dying after a tea ceremony. I liked a lot of this but thought it could have been better told. Caterpillar, I thought was masterful. We are confronted with a mere torso and head of a man who is being further injured and degraded (and whipped) by his wife. She says he has returned injured from war and only she can bear to face him but certainly does not treat him very 'lovingly' as we would conceive of the word. There is a lot here of love and hate, of need and possession and although it is at times very hard to watch I was most impressed. The final, Crawling Bugs, doesn't quite match up to the Sato film but is well shot and certainly well worth watching. All told a surprisingly good quartet and tempts one towards the writings of the mysterious, Mr Rampo.

"Rampo Noir" is a collection of 4 short films loosely (and I mean 'LOOSELY' like your mouth after a heavy dose of novocaine at the dentist) based on the 1950s short stories of Edogawa Rampo.

The pen name "Edogawa Rampo" is a Japanese katakana phonetic translation for "Edgar Allen Poe" (say them out loud), which shows the author made no attempt to hide the strong influence Mr. Poe had on him. And indeed, perhaps minus Poe's unique sarcastic wit, the two writers are similar in many ways. That is, Rampo was an excellent writer of Victorian surrealism.

Here we have a modern visual adaptation of Rampo's work which falls short of conveying the master's subtle, Victorian style, but as standalone works of 21st century erotica-horror, they are very effective. These films take the psychologically off-kilter imaginings of Rampo and convert them into outright physical, psychosexual nightmares. Rampo never wrote about steamy sex scenes, bondage & blatant perversion, but these adaptations rely heavily on them. Perhaps more noticeable is the way these adaptations are stripped of any morality that Rampo had originally conveyed. These ain't your grandfather's sort of literature. Characters here are unapologetically twisted, evil & sadistic, hardly recognizable as human beings.

If you can get past that, or if you've come here wanting to see some sick, twisted stuff, then read on. You'll probably enjoy these works.

#1 "Mars Canal" - We begin with the shortest one, a silent film showing a man stumbling through a strange landscape while having disturbing, sexual flashbacks. Most people are utterly confused by this one, and indeed the meaning (here as well as in Rampo's original story) is very abstract. The cinematography is gorgeous, making extreme use of vivid greens and light/dark contrast.

#2 "Hell of Mirrors" is so far from the original story that it's unrecognizable, but it has an interesting story nonetheless. The original story was about a man who was obsessed with mirrors to the point that he builds an experimental laboratory dedicated to the study of optical illusions, culminating in a fantastic & shocking experiment where he builds a spherical chamber of mirrors which he enters. The film is, instead, about a series of gruesome murders of women which all involve mirrors. Also stuck in there are some bizarre love triangles and a creepy scene of sadistic sex (none of which is in the original Rampo). I feel this piece's strength is its creepy mood and the mystery aspect of it, as we follow a detective trying to catch the killer.

#3 "Caterpillar" is the sickest of the lot. Be prepared, this one outshines any twisted story I've seen except for maybe "The Human Centipede" (a laughably gross movie about a German doctor who sews a bunch of people together, mouth-to-butt. Who comes up with this stuff??). The original "Caterpillar" by Rampo is about a war hero who comes home disfigured, deaf, mute & quadruplegic. His devoted wife cares for him but wrestles between tender love & her cruel impulses to torment her husband. In this film, the cruel impulses take center stage, are exaggerated and shown in shocking imagery along with sexual perversion. Seriously, this gets even sicker than the 1982 "Basket Case" or any of its twisted sequels. Nothing like the original Rampo except in the opening premise, this film's strength lies in its sheer perversity. Not for the faint of heart!

#4 "Crawling Bugs" is my favorite of the lot because, rather than bombard us nonstop with disturbing images, it breaks up the pace with some satirically bright, comedic scenes. It begins with a jolly, dreamlike scene of a grinning man and his less-than-grinning bride-to-be about to be married in a setting that can only be described as a set from Walt Disney's "Zip a dee doo dah". From there, we get fragmented flashbacks to a consideably darker tale unfolding about a man obsessed with a famous actress. It hops back & forth to the magical wonderland with some excellent dark comedy spicing things up all the way to the hilariously sick ending. Faithful to Rampo or not, "Crawling Bugs" is a real treat for the mildly depraved cinephiles amongst us.

These films have 1 thing in common, and that is an expert approach to cinema as an art form. The films are challenging, fragmented and gorgeously filmed while digging deep into the rancorous well of human depravity. Give 'em a watch, and then if your curiosity is piqued I highly recommend reading the original Rampo stories that spawned them. They're very hard to find, especially in English, so I may try to post a few in the discussion board. I'd love to hear what people think of these adaptations.