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| Images courtesy of Arrow Video |
The macabre writings of Edogawa Ranpo have had more than
their fair share strutting across the Japanese silver screen. From Yasuzo Masumura’s horrific 1969 romantic
drama Blind Beast to Teruo Ishii’s Horrors of Malformed Men of
the same year to the more recent Rampo of 1994 and Shinya Tsukamoto’s Gemini
of 1999, Ranpo’s stories invariably found their way to the widescreen cinema
canvas time and time again. Circa 2005,
following the release of Ichi the Killer and Uzumaki, the same
production team assembled together a quartet of filmmakers from Suguru
Takeuchi, Akio Jissoji, Hisayasu Sato and manga artist Atsushi Kaneko to make
an anthological rumination on four short stories of the renowned Japanese
horror author entitled Rampo Noir.
Previously released on DVD in the United States, the film now comes
fully restored in a new limited edition set from Arrow Video featuring newly
filmed interviews with three of the surviving directors and the cinematographer
of the late Akio Jissoji. The result is
one of the more colorful J-horror anthologies prominently featuring pop
Japanese actors Tadanobu Asano and Ryuhei Matsuda.
Starting off elliptical and hyperkinetic, we find a nameless
naked Asano atop a circular pond in a desolate landscape that appears to be
interdimensional in the film’s first segment Mars’ Canal by music video
artist Suguru Takeuchi. Featuring
rapid-fire cuts of a naked heterosexual couple entwined and/or fighting and
writhing about, the opening segment replete with negative cutting and scratchy
35mm sounds feels spoken of the same breath as Chris Cunningham’s Flex. Next the film jumps into a tale of Mirror
Hell, directed and filmed by Akio Jissoji and it is a surreal warping of
vision while also playing on the notion of mirrors leading to other portals in
spacetime. Then we find the film testing
the viewer’s gag reflexes with the perversely slimy sinewy quadriplegic affront
Caterpillar from Hisayasu Sato.
Try to imagine Takashi Miike’s Audition if the girl got away with
it. Lastly, manga artist Atsushi Kaneko’s
Crawling Bugs follows the obsessive fixations of a renowned actresses’
limo driver in a segment that for some will echo the sardonic pop visuals of
Takashi Miike’s The Happiness of the Katakuris.
Not for the faint hearted and featuring many of the same
cast and crew members behind Ichi the Killer with the ever-stunning
Tadanobu Asano weaving his way from segment to segment shifting characterization
and appearances throughout, Rampo Noir is hard uncompromising Edogawa
Ranpo through the lens of mid-2000s Japanese transgression. Freely blasting away at what previous
filmmakers couldn’t get away with in 1969, the film switches between each
director’s style and personal cinematographer giving viewers a most chameleonic
endeavor of confrontational J-horror.
Asano is a great avatar moving throughout the film while those who are
really looking will spot fellow Ichi the Killer costars Susumu Terajami
and Nao Omori. Ryuhei Matsuda, the son
of legendary actor Yusaku Matsuda, also shows up in the film’s most
transgressive segment. Visually speaking
and sonically, the film drastically changes throughout from feeling like a Stan
Brakhage film in the first segment to having an intentionally blown-out digital
look in later segments. The score
rendered jointly by Saiko Ai, Aramaki Kohei, Ikeda Ryoji and Yoshihide Otomo
ranges from subtle to bombastic depending on the section, all preserved in LPCM
2.0 audio.
Where Arrow Video went above and beyond the call of duty
with this forthcoming limited-edition release were the extras featuring
interviews with Suguru Takeuchi, Hisayasu Sato, Atushi Kaneko and
cinematographer Masao Nakabori reflecting on his experiences working for Akio
Jissoji. The set also comes with newly
filmed interviews with actor Yumi Yoshiyuki and archival stage greeting footage
with the cast and crew at the original premiere. Most unexpected on this set is a
feature-length behind-the-scenes making-of documentary from 2006 included in
the features. As always, Arrow Video saw
fit to do reversible sleeve art including an illustrated collector’s booklet
featuring new essay writing by Eugene Thacker and Seth Jacobowitz. Looking at Rampo Noir now, while the
film never really grows scary so to speak, the macabre horror elements, approaches
to filmmaking and conceptual ideas still make this collectively a far more
unnerving J-horror cocktail than, say, J-Horror Rising. Fans of Ranpo’s writings and screen adaptations
will be delighted with this. While Blind
Beast at present is the most horrific films of his works, Rampo Noir does
stoke at that film’s dark cavernous weathers at times.
--Andrew Kotwicki
