Rampo Noir (Rampo Jigoku) review

Rampo Noir is compilation of four short films by four up-and-coming Japanese directors. Each of the segments are adaptations of stories written in the early twentieth century by Taro Hirai—better known as Edogawa Rampo, a name which he derived from “Edgar Allen Poe”. The only common thread between the tales is that Tadanobu Asano is in each one, a fact that may be the only way a film like this could ever possibly get wide-release in the west. It’s dark, often disturbing, and occasionally just plain hard to watch both for its grotesque imagery and for dangerously straddling the line between arthouse flair and tiresome pretentiousness. Aside from that slight glitch, however, Rampo Noir’s 70+ year old stories ironically inject a whole lot of new life into Japanese horror, a genre whose originality has been on life support for a few years now.

“Mars’s Canal” (Kasei no Unga), directed by Suguru Takeuchi, is the first piece presented. It’s the shortest of the four, coming in at just under 7 minutes, and presumably serves as a very vague intro the other three stories. A completely naked Tadanobu Asano is shown staggering toward a small lake in the middle of the wilderness while simultaneously being flooded with memories of a physical altercation with a woman. There’s no sound for most of the segment and when the sound does kick in it’s just a bunch of white noise and prolonged tinnitus-like beeps. This one is strictly style over substance. It doesn’t make much sense but it’s beautifully shot.

The next film is Akio Jissoji’s offering, “Mirror Hell” (Kagami Jigoku) which is perhaps the most reserved of the four—and that’s saying a lot considering the graphic SM scene wedged in toward the end. This time Asano plays the role of Kogoro Akechi, a private detective investigating the mysterious deaths of women whose bodies are discovered with their faces and skulls melted with no apparent cause. It isn’t long before Akechi discovers each of the victims own the same type of mirror and he decides to pay the local mirror artisan a visit. This one was a fairly straight-forward Sherlock Holmes-style mystery in that the crux of the film was solving the who, how, and why of the murders. To accentuate the throw-back nature of the film Jissoji uses muted colors and a drab wardrobe consistent with but not tied to the genre it draws from.

Hisayasu Sato, best known for directing the uber-repulsive gore-fest Naked Blood directs the third film entitled “Caterpillar” (Imomushi). Yukiko Okamoto (Lisa from Bounce Ko Gals) plays Tokiko, the wife of First Lieutenant Sunaga (Nao Omori) who was a war hero before being badly injured in battle and now nothing is left of him but a head and torso. Ryuhei Matsuda plays Taro Hirai, a unemotional artist who acts as a casual observer as more is revealed about the perverse nature of the relationship between Tokiko and her completely helpless husband. I must admit I was never a fan of Sato’s work but this segment really impressed me. Instead of just going all out with gore like I was expecting he exercised some restraint and because of this it becomes even more unsettling. You can’t just dismiss it as pure exploitation and spend the duration “eww”ing. This allows the audience to concentrate more on the relationship between the main characters, which is far more disconcerting than the gore could ever be.

The final, and probably my favorite segment is Atsushi Kaneko’s “Crawling Bugs” (Mushi). One has to appreciate the apparent lack of image consultants in the Japanese film industry as Tadanobu Asano expertly plays an aloof germophobe whose obsession with a stage actress he’s been chauffeuring for takes an alarming turn as his demented mind begins to distort his perception of reality. Without giving away too much I’ll just say that the final scene is one of the most disgusting things you’ll probably ever see on film and is a fitting end to such an uncompromisingly grisly compilation of short films.

The lack of a supernatural aspect in these films is a refreshing change of pace for Japanese horror. Like Takashi Miike’s “Audition” or Shugo Fujii’s “Living Hell”, the films of Rampo Noir instead strictly reflect the horror the human mind itself is capable of when a few neurons misfire, which is evokes a far more unsettling feeling than any sort of vengeful ghost or mindless rampaging zombie ever could.

Watch trailer

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Availability: US distributor Genius Productions released "Rampo Noir" on region 1 DVD with English subtitles on October 31, 2006. Picture is a bit on the grainy side in darker scenes and the only special feature included is a trailer with pretty bad picture quality compared to the main feature. For full specs, see this link.

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Tags: akio jissoji atsushi kaneko chisako hara edogawa rampo hanae kan hiroki narimiya hiromasa taguchi hisayasu sato kaiji moriyama masami horiuchi mikako ichikawa minori terada nao omori ryuhei matsuda suguru takeuchi susumu terajima tadanobu asano tamaki ogawa tomoya nakamura yukiko okamoto yuko daike yumi yoshiyuki