Horrors of Malformed Men [Blu-ray]

Director: Teruo Ishii Teruo Ishii

Overview

Director Teruo Ishii takes the helm for this controversial shocker that follows a young medical student as he escapes from a medical asylum and makes a shocking discovery while attempting to locate his mysterious doppelganger. Hirosuke is an amnesiac determined to locate his long lost father. Soon after escaping the asylum where he is being held against his will, Hirosuke is shocked to see a picture of his spitting image in the newspaper. Now, as Hirosuke assumes the identity of a dead man in order to travel to remote Panorama Island and unlock the secrets of his family past, the grotesque truth that awaits him will forever alter his perception of the natural world. Deep in the jungles of Panorama Island, Hirosuke's obsessed father has been conducting a series of bizarre medical experiments in hopes of finding a cure for his disfigured wife. But success has eluded the crazed scientist, and all that his experiments have yielded is an abominable dominion populated by repulsive, half-human/half-man hybrids. Here, in a surreal world of incest, murder, and insanity, Hirosuke will finally come face to face with the most terrifying creations ever to walk the earth.

Product Details

Release Date:	09/18/2018
UPC:	0760137166283
Original Release:	1969
Rating:	NR
Source:	Arrow Video
Region Code:	A
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Mono]
Language:	English
Time:	1:39:00
Sales rank:	21,226

Special Features

Two Audio Commentaries by Japanese cinema experts Tom Mes and Mark Schilling; Malformed Movies, a newly video interview with Toei exploitation movie Screen Masahiro Kakefuda; Malformed Memories, filmmakers Shinya Tsukamoto (Tetsuo the Iron Man) and Minoru Kawasaki (The Calamari Wrestler) on the career of Director Teruo Ishii; Ishii in Italia, Ishii and Mark Schilling visit the Far East Film Festival; Image Gallery; Theatrical Trailer; Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Dan Mumford

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Asao Koike	Actor
Mitsuko Aoi	Actor
Tatsumi Hijikata	Actor
Teruko Yumi	Actor
Yukie Kagawa	Actor
Minoru Ohki	Actor
Teruo Yoshida	Actor
Masao Yagi	Composer

Technical Credits

Teruo Ishii

Masahiro Kakefuda

Teruo Ishii	Screenwriter,Director
Masahiro Kakefuda	Screenwriter

Editorial Reviews

This intense Japanese horror film earned quite a reputation by being banned from public viewing for several years. That said, this reputation should not be taken lightly as Horrors Of Malformed Men is a powerful, transgressive work that still packs a punch. The storyline was stitched together from several stories by Japanese horror legend Edogawa Rampo and this gives the script a certain delirium as it hurtles from one bizarre plot twist to another. Writer/director Teruo Ishii lives up the madness of his source material by giving it a stylized approach, adding color-tinting to flashback sequences and using performance-art dancers to perform as the malformed men of the title. These unusual tactics work thanks to both the director's confident sense of style and inspired performances from the cast: Teruo Yoshida delivers a straight-faced turn as the hero that provides an anchor that the viewer can relate to amidst all the strange sights while Tatsumi Hijikata creates an unforgettable villain, mixing an effortless intensity with an unusual physicality derived from his performance-art dance training. The only real flaw with Horrors Of Malformed Men is that its pacing lags slightly around the midpoint but Ishii makes up for that with a mind-bending final half hour that piles on bizarre visuals and climaxes with an barrage of outrageous plot twists and secret revelations that will leave even the most hardened cult film fans slackjawed. Needless to say, the finished film isn't for all tastes but fans of bizarre cult cinema owe it to themselves to see Horrors Of Malformed Men at least once so they can see the extremes of what vintage Japanese cinema has to offer.