SYNOPSICS
Ranpo jigoku (2005) is a Japanese movie. Akio Jissôji,Atsushi Kaneko,2 more credits has directed this movie. Tadanobu Asano,Yûko Daike,Chisako Hara,Masami Horiuchi are the starring of this movie. It was released in 2005. Ranpo jigoku (2005) is considered one of the best Fantasy,Horror movie in India and around the world.
A Japanese anthology film consisting of four segments on works by Edogawa Ranpo. Mars Canal - A story told without speaking. It tells the story of a naked man who wanders through a depressing and desolate landscape recalling memories of his former lover. Mirror Hell - The story revolves around a detective who is trying to find out why several women are being found dead with burnt faces and charred skulls. During his investigation he finds an odd hand mirror at the scene that starts unraveling the mystery. Caterpillar - A war hero returns home with severe injuries. He is deaf with no limbs and only his eyesight remaining. His beautiful wife, tired of taking care of him, turns to torturing him for her amusement. Crawling Bugs - An actress is returning home from a successful night on stage, until her limo driver decides that she should be coming home with him.
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Ranpo jigoku (2005) Reviews
This achieves exactly what it sets out to do.
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.
Mind-blowing!
Uh.. wow. Here's one you will never forget. Four disgusting and insane shorts that seem loosely connected at times (themes of torture, mirrors, obsession, love, bugs, and.. uh.. Tadanobou Asano are in most of the shorts), all lovingly filmed by 4 different directors. Great acting and beautiful visuals throughout and never a dull moment in its 2 hour running time, this film is actually shockingly beautiful and very experimental at times (see the first story which is completely silent) and is just so full of ideas and life that it should be required viewing for everyone who's into cinema that's a little bit different than the norm. Much more so than the overrated 3... Extremes, this is a film that actually manages to disturb you with its images. Just try getting the images of a disgusting, drooling, dying human caterpillar or a very realistic decomposing corpse out of your head. However, what really sets this film apart are actually the BEAUTIFUL visuals. I can't really describe what makes them so beautiful; you just have to see them. Completely unnerving and endlessly fascinating throughout, this is definitely some kind of masterpiece that doesn't have any of the monotony that bogs down most pictures of this type. In fact, it's hard to choose a favorite short amongst the 4, because they're all so good! Highly recommended.
A Mixed Bag
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.
Erotic-Grotesque Japanese Anthology
Rampo Noir is an anthology film that loosely adapts four short stories by Japan's foremost crime/mystery writer Edogawa Rampo (a pseudonym inspired by Edgar Allan Poe.) Often called Japan's Edgar Allan Poe, Rampo's macabre tales frequently involve eccentric and/or disfigured characters enmeshed in bizarre plots that can include anything from a wife who turns her husband into a 'caterpillar' to a chair-maker who buries himself inside one of his own armchairs so women can sit on him. Other (Japanese) films based on Rampo's writing include: Blind Beast, The Horror of Malformed Men and Watcher in the Attic. The first segment is a mostly silent short titled Mars Canal directed by newcomer Suguru Takeuchi. With a runtime of only two minutes it features Tadanobu Asano (Electric Dragon 80.000 V, Ichi the Killer) on some kinda of lunar-scape having flashbacks (dreams?) of beating his girlfriend. Not really much to comment on here - definitely pretty surreal, especially when the lulling silence is suddenly broken with harsh noise sound effects. The next story is called Mirror Hell and is directed by Akio Jissoji. Again Tadanobu Asano stars, this time as Detective Kogoro Akechi who is investigating a series of deaths in which beautiful women are discovered with their faces melted and their skulls turned into ashes. As a hand mirror is always found at the scene of the crime, Detective Akechi soon learns the deaths are the work of Toru (Hiroki Narimiya) a mad mirror-maker who is continuing the Japanese art of mirror-making the traditional way. This whole segment has an extreme kaleidoscopic feel to it as every shot seems to have 100 mirrors in it, which obviously pays off visually. Also included is a rather random rope-bondage 'n' candle wax session which perks things up a bit sleaze-wise. Next up is Hisayasu Sato's (Naked Blood) wonderfully perverse entry, Caterpillar. This is definitely the best of the bunch - First Lieutenant Sunaga (Nao Omori) returned from war relatively unharmed but in a psychotically desperate attempt to stop him from returning to the battlefield his wife (Yukiko Okamoto) amputated both his arms and legs and now cares for him as her 'little caterpillar'. I must mention that caring for him includes brutally whipping him, slicing off one of his nipples with a straight razor, gouging out one of his eyes and other deviant acts. This is all gorgeously shot in true Sato style (albeit on a slightly bigger budget than usual) with strange sequences shot in colored negative in which we see through the 'caterpillars' eyes, desolate surroundings and a fantastic finale. Finally we come to Manga artist Atsushi Kaneko's film-making debut - Crawling Bugs. The story centers around a chauffeur named Masaki (again played by Tadanobu Asano) who becomes obsessed with one of his famous passengers, stage actress Fuyu Kinoshita (Tamaki Ogawa). Masaki is a certified Mysophobe (hates germs & dirt) and gets a nasty rash on his neck when he touches people. Seeing as he is madly in love with Fuyu but can't exactly touch her, he figures a way round this by killing her and taking her home to live with him?! This has to be my second favorite entry as it has some of the most surreal imagery - an almost hallucinogenic set-piece in Masaki's home (mind?) where he paints the dead actress multicolors then unsuccessfully tries to inject her with embalming fluid, resulting in a bloodbath. Plenty of black humor here too - when the police burst into Masaki's apartment he calmly pulls his head free from the rotting belly of his 'lover' and says "what?''. Atsushi Kaneko is one director I'll definitely be keeping an eye on. Overall, an excellent anthology which showcases a coupla up 'n' coming Japanese directors and which may also introduce a few more folk to the wonders of Edogawa Rampo.
Art Horror anthology succeeds and fails
Without actually reading a Rampo story, viewers (including me) might be at a be disadvantage appreciating this production. Long, arty in good ways and bad, disturbing and gory at times, this is not an off the shelf horror film even for Japan. The four directors bring their individual talents to each story. The first story is the most abstract and while very beautiful at times passes like an avant-garde experimental film, evocative imagery to be evoked by few. The second story is by bad boy director Akio Jissoji. Like other films from his 40 year career it's filled with incredible visual compositions and scenes of S/M sex. The story is reasonably good and the closest to a normal plot in the entire film. The ridiculous S/M scene excluded, this segment works well. The third by Sato, focuses on mutilation and torment, as a woman "cares" for her "caterpillar" war hero husband. Care includes whipping the invalid and slicing his nipple off. The entire segment takes place in a destroyed bunker, apparently right after or during WWII. The married couple share the bunker with the woman's uncle's assistant who watches over a hidden art collection. The uncle has left for an "island". Bizarre and perverse, this segment is tough to watch at times and not because of the effects. The behavior is very weird and disturbing. The fourth, apparently by a first time director, is the weakest visually although it has some excellent set design. A rash afflicted limo driver with an extreme germ phobia longs for his boss, a beautiful theater actress. This segment is essentially a head long dive into madness as the driver kills the actress to "save" her from her boyfriend who places weird leeches on her neck. The story shifts gears as the driver now has to deal with the germs rotting her body. While well photographed, after the Caterpillar segment I needed something paced better. The black humor is a relief but this one just takes too long until we get to the very disgusting ending. Total together? Moderately entertaining for segments two and three. The film has a typical Japanese running theme of violence against women. Even the third segment ends with the woman character getting something done to her by a man. Director Jissoji has been doing films like this for 40 years, get over it man! While the misogyny might not mean anything to you (it's probably the reason some will watch it) the acting might be more of an issue. There's been an unfortunate trend in recent Japanese movies to hire rock and roll pretty boys instead of accomplished actors. Both segments two and three suffer as important parts are given to actors who can't really do the roles. The S/M scene in segment two is just awful because of it. An interesting experiment in anthology horror. Is about as successful as the Italian/French "Spirits of the Damned" from the 1960's. More disgusting however.