L'effrayant Docteur Hijikata

The movie directed by Teruo Ishii was part of series of very radical erotic violence movies that he directed for Toei studio in the late '60s and early '70s.

The story is an edit on many novels written by Edogawa Ranpo (who got his name from Edgar Alan Poe), but gathered fans and has become a popular story since it was made. Kogoro Akechi is the main protagonist that appears in many of Ranpo's novels.

Kogoro Akechi has somewhat become like the Sherlock Homes of Japan. Becoming the focus of many mystery drama with even new stories invented like this one long after the death of his creator.

This is a pretty interesting story, and no wonder it still garners fan base. It's an improbably story, but it carries the essence of Ranpo's novel that contains strange and unusual situation, and characters. Actors, and acting are first rate, and has the over the top craziness that director Ishii is known for, that makes this movie worth watching.

It's not a mainstream movie by any means, but is an interesting movie from the '60s Japan.

If you can stick this movie out till the end, you'll get a very rewarding movie. It's not the easiest movie to watch and it didn't seemed at first to me that this movie was going to be much good early one but it's definitely a movie that gets better in its second halve, when there is more story and the movie its visuals become just great to watch.

It's a quite surrealistic Japanese movie, that relies heavily on its visuals. There are some amazing visuals throughout the movie, with also the thanks of the phenomenal camera-work. It's an artistic movie above all things, so beware of what to expect.

Of course there is also a story but this one is quite hard to follow at times. It isn't until the movie reaches its halve way point that it becomes more or less more clear in which direction the story is going. The movie soon becomes a sort of a surrealistic Japanese version of the Island of Dr. Moreau. I think those that are familiar with this story, or any of the other movie versions of the story will be more able to understand and appreciate this movie.

For a Japanese movie it also features quite some good acting. It's an obviously well cast movie, in which the actors don't act in a very theatrical way, like you might expect from a Japanese movie. Especially surprising also since this movie got made back in 1969.

After finishing watching this movie I simply must say that I overall enjoyed it and found it to be an ultimately rewarding movie to watch, though it's obvious that this is not really a movie for just everyone.

8/10

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Well, where to begin? This notorious Japanese horror has finally surfaced and our first concern is what was so terrible that kept it banned for so long? Made just over 20 years after the atomic bomb was exploded over Hiroshima, some of this film looks as if some of the short-lived survivors might have made it to the set. Both the way the deformity issue is enthused over here and the clear connection with the bomb attack, make this a true horror. We begin with vivid scenes inside a mental institution but then the film settles down into a creepy mystery before cracking open about half an hour in, whence we find ourselves in the Mexican, Jodorowsky territory, and then worse. This film is not particularly well written and is uneven and occasionally rather silly but nevertheless this is still a work of some considerable power. A one off and a must see for those not easily shocked.

Postwar Japan gave birth to probably one of the most consistently weird dance forms, Butoh. It rather hard to describe except that the processions of anguished clay caked naked bodies and rag covered transvestites makes me think of a nuclear holocaust. Since Japan is the only country with any experience with the horrors of a nuclear holocaust, it isn't surprising.

We open with a dazed man in the middle of a cage of naked crazy women in a mental institution. We soon learn that he's an inmate as well. He is haunted by an odd children's lullaby. That night a strange bald man tries to kill him but instead our hero kills the bald man and escapes. Our hero hears the unusual lullaby and finds a circus performer who seems to come from the same remote place on the coast. He makes his way to the coast and finds out that a rich man who looks exactly like him has just died. He digs up the body and switches clothing becoming the dead man mistakenly buried too soon. Our hero then attempts to discover the strange secrets of the dead man's family while trying to imitate the deceased.

After watching this production I am very interested in why this film has been banned in Japan for so long. There are plenty of films that are WAY MORE DISTURBING, disgusting or horrifying from Japan, some made the same year! The most likely part is the second half of the film when the Butoh dancers are given plenty of screen time but much of it is mystifying to me rather then disturbing. The couple of torture scenes are rough but not worse then anything I've seen from any pinku film.

Anyway the film is quite good for the first half and starts to fall apart during the second half. It seems the the director and his camera person really didn't know what to do with the Butoh dancers. We get a number of very striking Butoh scenarios, poorly filmed (compared to the excellent filming in the rest of the film), that go by with the main characters just gazing on in disbelief. No real connection to the plot.

An interesting experiment.

Horrors of Malformed Men is a quite experimental movie by veteran director Ishii Teruo that has been inspired by the tales of famous mystery and horror author Edogawa Rampo who had himself been inspired by Western authors such as Edgar Allan Poe. This experimental movie at the pulse of its time combines several of these tales. The main issue is that this fusion isn't always fluid and leads to two completely contrasting parts.

The first half of the movie is a murder mystery tale. A medical student without any recollection of his past is trapped in a sinister asylum. He manages to escape when one of the guards attempts to murder him. The fugitive discovers the photograph of a recently deceased man from a prosperous family who looks exactly like him. The medical student decides to take the dead man's identity to find out the truth about his origins and escape from the police.

The second half of the movie is a supernatural horror tale. The medical student travels to the island of a mad scientist who transforms perfectly normal humans into hideous freaks to create a better society. He gets captured, manipulated and threatened by the scientist and attempts to escape the island and prevent the scientist's megalomanic plans.

It's probably a matter of prefence whether you prefer the first or the second half of the movie but they are so different from each other that few people will equally appreciate both parts. The first half is atmospheric, mysterious and surprising as it convinces with clever storytelling and intriguing characters. It recalls numerous European murder mystery films as especially the German Edgar Wallace films and the Italian giallo genre come to mind. The second half is much more brutal, experimental and frantic and ventures into experimental cinematography with hectic camera work, numerous flashbacks and colourful locations. It's a mixture of Japan's very own pink film genre of the sixties and American pre-war science-fiction and horror cinema somewhere between King Kong and Island of Lost Souls.

In the end, Horrors of Malformed Men is certainly daring, entertaining and unconventional. However, the script is all over the place and the conclusion might even be too unconventional for most open-minded cineasts. Ishii Teruo should have created two different movies here instead of putting together two ideas that don't gel.