Rampo Noir

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.

I thought the movie was... interesting. Some parts a little too artsy. I'm not really here to debate the movie but, to ask about the warning in the beginning. What are the EXACTLY talking about pertaining the "intended effects"? I'm not sure if they're talking about the blockey distorted appearance of a scratched DVD or if its just the one I'm watching. After a few minutes it gave me a little headache. I thought that that was what they were warning about until towards the end when the guy in crawling bugs says, "what was I thinking?" then the movie was "normal". I had rented the movie from Blockbuster and it was brand new and undamaged.

Lengthy anthology of films made from stories by Edogowa Rampo, that all seem to revolve around obsessive love and the consequences of feeling; 'Since I fell in love with you my life has been hell'. First up, 'Mars Canal' comprises a naked man walking across what appears to be a lunar landscape and recalling a naked fight with a lover (?). Not much in this one for me and 'experimental' would probably be the correct tag. Next up, Mirror Hell was a fairly interesting but rather convoluted tale involving mirrors and ladies dying after a tea ceremony. I liked a lot of this but thought it could have been better told. Caterpillar, I thought was masterful. We are confronted with a mere torso and head of a man who is being further injured and degraded (and whipped) by his wife. She says he has returned injured from war and only she can bear to face him but certainly does not treat him very 'lovingly' as we would conceive of the word. There is a lot here of love and hate, of need and possession and although it is at times very hard to watch I was most impressed. The final, Crawling Bugs, doesn't quite match up to the Sato film but is well shot and certainly well worth watching. All told a surprisingly good quartet and tempts one towards the writings of the mysterious, Mr Rampo.

Exploring the darker edges of eeriness, sexuality, and bizarre, horror-esque art with unconventional layers of psychological deviance, Rampo Noir is challenging as it is horrifically disturbing, presenting the writer's fiction in radical ways, hoping to push boundaries but never quite succeeding. Partly due to the violent, sadomasochistic sex scenes that often crop up, but also because it's not always immediately clear what the filmmakers are trying to say, thanks to their ponderously slow approach. There's only so much time you can spend on artistically rotting corpses and auditory excess before you're going to annoy someone, but the film remains consistently refreshingly and cinematically striking with an unabashed eroticism and willingness to plunge into the dark realms of Rampo's work. Each director breathes life into their own respective take on the material, all have a unique visual style, which help draw you into their strange worlds, be it exploitation or arthouse; each segment carves its own identity, although, admittedly, some more to my taste than others, with the high points being the two segments that bookend the feature and, ironically, come from the two newcomers. Suguru Takeuchi delivers a full-on avant-garde experimental and introspective short, full of evocative imagery in what is a beautifully surreal and breathtakingly stunning, if bitterly short, dive into existential dread. Atsushi Kaneko, meanwhile, more well-known for his status as a mangaka, makes an impressive directorial debut with the finale, blending his usual sensibilities with a lush cinematic intensity and plenty of darkly comedic moments. That being said, the other two segments are far from a slouch. Adapting his third Rampo tale, Akio Jissoji's usual keen eye for composition and signature stylistic flourishes turn his short into a mesmerising fever dream. Hisayasu Sato, meanwhile, delivers a grimly gruesome tale, taking Rampo's work to its most grotesque extreme, containing mutilation and plenty of bodily fluids. It's presented with an unusual use of light and colour, as unsettling as it is provocative, a visceral commentary on physical and emotional dependency. Despite the mismatched feel of the whole affair, Rampo Noir's hallucinogenic approach to narrative and visuals is nothing short of invigorating.

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.