I like a malformed man as much as the next guy... No, strike that, I like malformed men more than most guys, so I was eager to see this infamous flick after reading about it for years. Now that I've seen it, I can return to my usual state of mind, which is probably just a stone's throw away from where this film came from. Like some of its characters, the film itself is malformed and untidy. There is an extremely convoluted plot about a man pretending to be someone else, and so many loose ends a detective is required to turn up at the climax to explain what the hell is going on. In a deformed nutshell, the film is about a wacko, who looks a little like Jesus, who has isolated himself on a island in order to create a society of freaks. Somehow, his doing this enables him to "get back" at the "normal" people who have ridiculed him. His motivations don't make a lot of sense, but since he's a nut, they don't have to. The wacko takes well formed people and turned them into malformed people. For example, he creates his own male/female Siamese twins by fusing their asses together. The special make-up effects are mildly grotesque, never achieving any level of realism. It is most unfortunate and sad that Ishii didn't take the Todd Browning approach and use real freaks of nature. Perhaps the real freaks were busy working in Sideshow Alley or performing in traveling circuses; however you look at it, it's a missed opportunity of epic proportions. Although the film most closely resembles "Island of Lost Souls", it is too sloppy and too silly to be considered a Japanese equivalent to that masterpiece. Once again, I find myself liking Ishii the filmmaker more than Ishii's film. His sensibility is original and interesting, and his love of the macabre and sexually grotesque is to be be admired. This is certainly worth seeing, but be prepared for a lot of awkwardness and a very slow pace. And don't come expecting too many shocks because the real shock here is the lack of shocks.
Review of Horrors of Malformed Men
