Horrors of Malformed Men (1969)

After escaping from an insane asylum, a medical student assumes the identity of a mysterious dead man, who appeared to be his doppelganger, and gets lured to a sinister island ruled by a mad scientist and his malformed men.

Director:

Teruo Ishii

Writers:

Teruo Ishii (screenplay), Masahiro Kakefuda (screenplay)

Stars:

Teruo Yoshida, Yukie Kagawa, Teruko Yumi

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Teruo Yoshida	...	Hirosuke Hitomi / Genzaburô Komoda (plays two parts)
Yukie Kagawa	...	Shizuko
Teruko Yumi	...	Hideko / Hatsuyo (plays two parts)
Mitsuko Aoi	...	Toki Komoda
Michiko Kobata	...	Chiyoko Komoda
Yumiko Katayama	...	Female Patient A
Kei Kiyama	...	Kei
Reiko Mikasa	...	Mad Woman
Miki Obana	...	Slashed Woman
Michi Tanaka	...	Kin
Yoshiko Katô	...	Masseur
Asano Kanamori	...	Female Patient B
Yôko Koyama	...	Miki
Chiyo Okada	...	Clerk
Mie Hanabusa	...	Mie

Storyline

After escaping from an insane asylum, a young medical student takes on the identity of a dead man to discover the true identity of a man whose picture he saw in a newspaper--who is his exact double. His investigation leads him to a remote island where he discovers a sinister laboratory where a crazed scientist is performing gruesome experiments on live humans--and that his own family has a connection to the scientist.

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Plot Keywords:

insanity | based on novel | eye patch | female frontal nudity | sepia tinted scene | 

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Genres:

Horror

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Did You Know?

Connections

Featured in Malformed Memories (2007)

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Soundtracks

Utsukushiki Tennen (aka: Beautiful Nature)
Composed by Hozumi Tanaka
Circus music

User Reviews

Bizarre attempt to mix horror with Butoh dance

Postwar Japan gave birth to probably one of the most consistently weird dance forms, Butoh. It rather hard to describe except that the processions of anguished clay caked naked bodies and rag covered transvestites makes me think of a nuclear holocaust. Since Japan is the only country with any experience with the horrors of a nuclear holocaust, it isn't surprising.

We open with a dazed man in the middle of a cage of naked crazy women in a mental institution. We soon learn that he's an inmate as well. He is haunted by an odd children's lullaby. That night a strange bald man tries to kill him but instead our hero kills the bald man and escapes. Our hero hears the unusual lullaby and finds a circus performer who seems to come from the same remote place on the coast. He makes his way to the coast and finds out that a rich man who looks exactly like him has just died. He digs up the body and switches clothing becoming the dead man mistakenly buried too soon. Our hero then attempts to discover the strange secrets of the dead man's family while trying to imitate the deceased.

After watching this production I am very interested in why this film has been banned in Japan for so long. There are plenty of films that are WAY MORE DISTURBING, disgusting or horrifying from Japan, some made the same year! The most likely part is the second half of the film when the Butoh dancers are given plenty of screen time but much of it is mystifying to me rather then disturbing. The couple of torture scenes are rough but not worse then anything I've seen from any pinku film.

Anyway the film is quite good for the first half and starts to fall apart during the second half. It seems the the director and his camera person really didn't know what to do with the Butoh dancers. We get a number of very striking Butoh scenarios, poorly filmed (compared to the excellent filming in the rest of the film), that go by with the main characters just gazing on in disbelief. No real connection to the plot.

An interesting experiment.

Details

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Release Date:

31 October 1969 (Japan)

Also Known As:

Horrors of Malformed Men

Filming Locations:

Noto, Ishikawa, Japan

Company Credits

Production Co:

Toei Company

Technical Specs

Runtime:

99 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1