Ranpo jigoku

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.

I thought the movie was... interesting. Some parts a little too artsy. I'm not really here to debate the movie but, to ask about the warning in the beginning. What are the EXACTLY talking about pertaining the "intended effects"? I'm not sure if they're talking about the blockey distorted appearance of a scratched DVD or if its just the one I'm watching. After a few minutes it gave me a little headache. I thought that that was what they were warning about until towards the end when the guy in crawling bugs says, "what was I thinking?" then the movie was "normal". I had rented the movie from Blockbuster and it was brand new and undamaged.

"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.

Rampo Noir is a collection of 4 short films based on stories by Edogawa Rampo, the so-called "Japanese Edgar Allen Poe". Rampo Noir is widely uneven, painfully pretentious and at least half an hour too long. Despite these shortcomings, the film does offer its fair share of pleasures - stunning visuals, black comedy and a large dose of Japanese weirdness. Rampo Noir is not a great film but it is an interesting addition to the very small genre of "arthouse horror".

The first of the four films sums up everything that is wrong with the project. A naked man running towards a lake is inter-cut with a naked couple wrestling. The film is silent and partly shown in slow motion. I'm sure there was a deep philosophical reason behind this but I was basically too bored to bother considering what it might be. Even the French would be embarrassed by this exercise in pretension. The next segment, Mirror Hell, is an improvement. For starters, it has sound and a narrative. Mirror Hell is a mystery about a mirror that has the nasty habit of burning off faces. The film is not particularly riveting and some of the special effects are clumsy and not very convincing. The segment is saved by some arresting photography and a wonderfully kinky sex scene between Azusa and Toru, which involves a lot of rope and candle wax.

Caterpillar is the third and, in many ways, most successful of the films at pushing the envelope. This film has an edge that the first two segments are sorely missing. The basic premise of the film is a wife who appears to have amputated her husband's arms and legs in order to save him from going to war. This film explores domestic violence and domination from the unusual angle of a female perpetrator. Caterpillar is an interesting thesis about love in one of its most warped incarnations but instead of shedding light on the issues it puts forward, the film is happy to be a kind of Japanese "Boxing Helena", with its focus firmly directed at shock value and titillation. And it is exceedingly successful at meeting these goals. The scenes where the wife makes her limbless husband eat from a dog bowl and then beats him with a riding crop certainly leave an impression, as does a gruesome scene where she cuts off his nipple. The film also offers a large dose of kinky, limbless sex which is portrayed as vilely erotic. Caterpillar is a nasty little film and Rampo Noir is all the better for it.

Crawling Bugs is the fourth and final segment of Rampo Noir. This film once again explores the idea of how the illusion of love can be the catalyst for the most abhorrent situations. Crawling Bugs tells the story of Masaki, a man who can not bear to be touched by other human beings. This obviously affects his chances with Fuyo, so he kills her and takes her home to be his bride. Despite the multitude of possibilities that this scenario offers, Crawling Bugs avoids the explicitness of "Nekromantik" or even "Kissed", and is happy to be blackly comedic. This is ultimately a smart move as Masaki's vain attempts to keep Fuyo from rotting inject Rampo Noir with some much needed humour and offer some pleasant respite from the sometimes overwhelming level of pretension. Crawling Bugs is visually stunning and very well directed. The gore effects are convincing and the film walks the fine line between the surreal and the plain disgusting with great skill.

Rampo Noir desperately tries to push the boundaries of mainstream cinema but never quite succeeds. In comparison to many of the films emerging from Asia, Rampo Noir is actually rather quaint - with the exception of the large quantity of kinky sex. However, the concept is an interesting one and it offers the opportunity to explore the work of four promising Japanese directors. Rampo Noir is no "Three Extremes" but is worth watching, particularly for the crazy woman with a riding crop.

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.