Director: Teruo Ishii
Notable Cast: Teruo
Yoshida, Yukie Kagawa, Teruko Yumi, Mitsuko Aoi, Michiko Kobata, Minoru Oki
As a cult cinema addict, it is always fun to find the
strange and off kilter pieces of film that exists. If you want strange and off
kilter, then Teruo Ishii has to be a staple of your queue. That’s just how it’s
going to be. A lot of his material has become hard to necessarily find over
time though and when Arrow Video first announced that their Blu Ray release of
his cult classic, Horrors of Malformed
Men, would be the first of a handful of new Ishii titles, it was a welcome
announcement. This title, which is generally regarded as one of his classics in
many film social circles, is a great way to introduce someone new to his
material. It’s an insane film, one that starts off half cocked then seemingly
finds a more traditional story telling groove before leaping off the cliff of
logic at the end, but it’s also a film that can be appreciated for its abrasive
tone instead of being completely off putting. Horrors of Malformed Men is a strange film, but charmingly so
despite many of its issues. Ergo, the perfect kind of cult film. It’s a film
that perfectly aligns with fans of Arrow Video releases.
The one aspect of Horrors
of Malformed Men that can be the strangest one, outside of the visual elements
which we will get to in a moment, is how the film plays out its structure and
narrative. The film is designed with a classic three act frame, but each of
them is very specifically designed for a tone and feeling. In some ways, the
first and third act, are similar, but the second act takes a drastic shift in
tone that can disengage the audience. However, no matter how similar or
different each act is, they are meant to play with the audience’s expectations
of reality and work as a strange and potent mixture. The perfect example of how
a film can work with its flaws.
Firstly, let’s start with the first and third act of the
film. Both bookends to Horrors of
Malformed Men feature nightmarish visuals and a sense of disconnect from
reality, driven by the lead character Hirosuke who will remain the path for the
audience to understand (or not) the world that he exists in. The film opens
with him being imprisoned in a cold and barren mental institution and no
recollection of why, how, or when he ended up in this predicament. Right away,
Teruo Ishii establishes this sense of nightmarish imagery and establishes its
theme where nothing is what it seems as our protagonist is thrust (with the
audience) in a barred room filled with a bevy of women – all seemingly lost in
their own world and where one of them stalks our protagonist with a knife. This
sense of being off balance is one that the film retains through this first act
and, as the narrative moves into the third act which takes place on an island
filled with strange “malformed men,” it batters the audience with its unbalance.
When reality is revealed to be as nightmarish and disconnected as the rest of
the film, through the often horrific and oddly humorous visuals and beats of
the film, one can see why this film has achieved cult status. Both acts are
filled with strange set pieces, whether it’s the asylum of the opening, a brief
stint at a carnival, or the island of misfit people, and Ishii intentionally
films things in a reality bending manner that will leave the audience asking
‘what the fuck is going on?’ more than anything else. This is the style that
Ishii is known for and this film delivers on it in spades, even going so far as
to end the film on one of the strangest imagines I have ever seen in cinema.
This is just the first and third acts though, so naturally,
what makes the second act so different? The second act, where our protagonist
pretends to be the recently passed heir to a wealthy family after spotting a
picture in the paper where the two look exactly alike, takes a careening left
turn from the visual and tonal style of the other two acts and evolves into an identity
thriller. It’s at this point that Ishii showcases his ability to navigate tone
and genre shifts like the true master of weird that he is. This act is
punctuated be a strange noir thriller vibe, going for a more classical thriller
lens, while the protagonist’s paranoia about being caught and playing into this
role becomes the focus as he attempts to unravel the mystery of this family in
front of him. The film maintains this sense of binding what’s real and what’s
unreal, a theme that carries through the whole film, but stylistically it might
as well have been from a completely different film.
Where Horrors of
Malformed Men does struggle is getting its ambitiously odd concepts and shifting
tones and style to flow. If you’ve seen Ishii films before, you already know
that part of his appeal as a director is that he seemingly gives no shits about
this issue. Granted, the strange leaps are not as drastic or gut punching as
something like Blind Woman’s Curse,
but the film does stutter in developing the ongoing drama between the acts. The
performances range from impressive to baffling - intentionally so, whether it
works or not in the latter, which helps to carry the film. Nonetheless, the
film does give off a lot of mixed signals at times (even within a single scene)
that can undermine the overall intent of the film.
While many of the other Japanese films that Arrow has been
releasing lately seem a bit sparse in their features, Horrors of Malformed Men is locked and loaded to appease fans. Not
only is the film a new 2K restoration, but the film has two (!) audio commentaries,
a couple of interviews, and another wonderful booklet with a fun analysis of
the film. The film looks phenomenal and the features add a lot of colorful
detail to interpretations and context for the film to exist in. A list of the
features is included below. This is a film that's ripe for exploration and this release is packed with great analysis.
Horrors of Malformed
Men is, without a shadow of a doubt, a cult film through and through. It’s
stylish, odd, and never doubts itself as it unleashes its thematic heavy and
completely bat shit tale. It’s also a film that is so intent on its narrative,
style, and wild approach that it forgets to effectively pull off its plot or
develop all of the characters in a way to maximize its impact. It’s hard not to
love it on some level due to the sheer intensity of its strangeness thanks to
the talents of large portions of the cast and some insanely effective directorial
moments from Ishii. If anything, with its flaws, it almost becomes more
enduring of time and it deserves this kind of treatment that Arrow Video has
given it. Horror of Malformed Men is a cult classic in all of its glory and
this latest release is the best way to experience the horrors it contains.
ARROW VIDEO FEATURES:
- Brand new 2K restoration of the film from the original negative
- High Definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation
- Original uncompressed mono 1.0 PCM audio
- Newly translated, optional English subtitles
- Two audio commentaries by Japanese cinema experts Tom Mes and Mark Schilling
- Malformed Movies: a new video interview with Toei exploitation movie screenwriter Masahiro Kakefuda
- Malformed Memories: Filmmakers Shinya Tsukamoto (Tetsuo the Iron Man) and Minoru Kawasaki (The Calamari Wrestler) on the career of director Teruo Ishii
- Image Gallery
- Theatrical trailer
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Dan Mumford
- FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Collector's booklet featuring new writing by Jasper Sharp, Tom Mes and Grady Hendrix
Written By Matt Reifschneider
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