Koji Wakamatsu RIP

Koji Wakamatsu, one of the few directors who never made a star-studded, audience-pleasing piece of commercial shit, has died. He was struck by a taxi cab and never fully recovered from his injuries.

He was 76 and made 100 movies.

I've written extensively on Mr. Wakamatsu on this blog, so I won't regurgitate the familiar.

An utterly unique filmmaker, he kowtowed to no motherless fuck and bravely railed against authority and authority figures, always presenting sex, politics, and violence -- and sometimes a combination of all three -- as intrinsic to life and our primal drives.

Every Wakamatsu film was a scream of outrage, of protest, at the way governments, figures of authority,  and media strive to pervert and destroy our basic natures.

Unlike 99% of all human beings, Wakamatsu gave a shit by not giving a fuck what people thought of him.

His work was a pure expression of his soul.

I admired and related to him so much. 

RIP, Koji.

A major bone from cinema's skeleton has been removed, and with that, so has a big, bloody chunk of hope.

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Fuck it! Can't believe you're gone, Koji. 

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My favorites of his:  

Go Go Second Time Virgin, Naked Bullet, The Man Who Assaulted 13 People, Violent Virgin

United Red Army, Caterpillar, Running in Madness Dying in Love, High Noon Rape

Violence Without A Cause, Dark Story of a Japanese Rapist, 

The Embryo Hunts in Secret, Sex Jack, Torture Chronicles: 100 Years 

Ecstasy of the Angels



 



 


 

The Utterly Splendid World of Suehiro Maruo

 

Miminashi Hohichi in the Dark (1999, 2011; Seirin Kogeisha)  is another extraordinary excursion into the world of Suehiro Maruo, the prolific artist behind Mr. Arashi's Amazing Freak Show (filmed as Midori) and Ultra Gash Inferno.

Although there have been several English language editions of his books, many have never been translated from the Japanese, and probably never will.

 

Maruo often insinuates iconic figures into his work, so the appearance of Frankenstein's 'Monster' in one story here provides disturbing and fascinating pulp fodder. After encountering a mother and daughter, he proceeds to engage in intercourse with one while the other becomes an equally unwilling participant.

There have been slightly sexualized versions of the Monster's story, but few feature the ferocious carnality of this gem.    

 

 

Georges Bataille's Histoire De L'oeil (Story of the Eye; 1928) surely had a muscular influence on Maruo and many of his contemporaries. Variations of and tableaux inspired by the book's deliciously grotesque eroticism permeate the artist's work.

 

Imo-Mushi (Beam Comix; 2009) is Maruo's take on Edogawa Rampo's Caterpillar story (filmed twice as: Caterpillar, and as one of four stories in the uneven Rampo anthology Rampo Noir). 

 

 

With surprisingly little fanfare, Koji Wakamatsu's Caterpillar (reviewed on this blog several months ago) has finally been released in the US by Kino Video.  

Although I had some reservations about its very plain digital appearance, it is still a very worthwhile and respectful take on the story.

 

As these images indicate, Maruo's version is a more deeply erotic interpretation, eschewing some of the source's political content. Still, the artist amply conveys the horrors of war hero worship and delivers a frightening, brutal yarn.

  An upcoming Maruo translation to English is The Strange Tale of Panorama Island. Although the book has been delayed for a while now, I hope it's release is still imminent. 

Personally, I'd prefer a translated volume of Maruo's insanely brutal and beautiful Lunatic Lovers (2007; Seirin Kogeisha). The images below barely capture the corrupt, vile, transgressive essence of this work.

 

 

 

An exceptionally good source for Maruo's work is  akatako.net

Wakamatsu's Caterpillar

In Koji Wakamatsu's Caterpillar (Kyatapira, 2010), the wife of a returned Japanese soldier is expected to treat her husband as a hero, a "god soldier" -- trouble is, the bloke's an absolute cunt. This is one of the best films yet from Wakamatsu, and you'd be hard put to find anything that deals with the subject of war, duty, patriotism, and the definition of  "hero"  as beautifully, directly, and metaphorically  as this does.

Based on a short story by Edogawa Rampo, the film's title is taken from the condition of the solider. His arms and legs have been blown off in combat and his face has horrendous scarring. He resembles a caterpillar, and sleeps, eats, and screws like one. A physically similar "caterpillar" appeared in Todd Browning's Freaks. He was known as 'The Human Torso'. This creature's name is Lieutenant Tadashi Kurokawa (Keigo Kusuya), a decorated military man who went to war representing the hopes and dreams of his small village.

Wakamatsu and his scriptwriters make some telling decisions about how they present Kurokawa from the outset, and these clarify the director's desire to get us to question what wartime heroism actually is.  Is raping, setting fire to villages, and shooting civilians something to celebrate?  The film opens with an unidentified Japanese soldier raping a Chinese woman while her house burns down.  We then cut to the soldier's homecoming. Clearly, the rapist was Kurokawa, our "hero". Bestowed with honors by the village and the military, the physically devastated returnee is given the name "god soldier" and wheeled off to a life of dependence. Although the Japanese officials assure him of their support, it doesn't materialize. Instead, the man's troubled wife, Shigeko (Shinobu Terajima in an award-winning performance), is left to nurse and feed him.

Things take a little while to get ugly between the two. The limbless Kurokawa, starved of sexual affection, gets his fill from Shigeko. It's just a little oral at first, but it progresses to intercourse in assorted positions. The fornication scenes are suitably bizarre and convincing, and give the film a delightfully grotesque edge. They reminded me of the late director Teruo Ishii's best work.  Eventually, the god soldier's demands become abusive and unreasonable, and Shigeko is forced to question the true meaning of  "patriotic duty".  Unable to complain about her situation, Shigeko does finds ways to equalize the relationship. One of these is to wheel her husband around the village like a carnival exhibit and force him to watch able-bodied people going about their day. Other options include starvation and neglect.

As described above, Kurokawa is depicted from the outset as less than a hero. Introduced as a rapist, our sympathy for him is certainly not overt. During the couple's confrontations, we also learn that Kurokawa beat Shigeko frequently even before he went to war. The writer in me feels that the film's drama might have been better served if Kurokawa had been a good man turned into something bad by his wartime experiences -- simply not mentioning that he beat Shigeko before the war would have achieved this.  It would have intensified our ambivalence about Shigeko's treatment of him also and created a greater moral quandary for her. But since the man is and always was a violent cunt, our sympathies barely shift. War simply made a bad man worse. Dramatically, that's not as interesting. As material for Wakamatsu's thematic intentions, it serves its purpose, however. I sense that's more the point.

The film is what it is, though, and I liked it for the most part. Although digital technology has produced some extraordinary looking films recently, this is not one of them. It's certainbly adequate, but the images are a bit murky at times or too stark at other times. There's no texture or "feel" to the film's look, so I always felt that an opportunity was missed.

The same source material, Rampo's short story, was recently adapted by director Hisayasu Sato for the anthology Rampo Noir (Ranpo jigoku, 2005). A grotesque, grisly, and beautiful collection of short stories based on the writer's fascinating work, Sato's Caterpillar is the stand-out piece. It diverges, however, from Wakamatsu's take, in that the returned soldier's limbs are hacked off not by war, but by his psychotic wife in order to prevent his return to soldiering. The expected consequences of THAT you need to see for yourself.  

The Hong Kong-based Panorama Corporation  is the first distributor out of the gate with an English-subtitled Blu-ray of Caterpillar.   Presentation quality is good and cover art is suitably bizarre. A French DVD with English subtitles was issued in early May, 2011.

The amazingly prolific and original Wakamatsu is already knee-deep in his next production; again,
Shinobu Terajima stars.

Caterpillar is highly recommended.

Towards the very end of 2011 and into 2012, New York-based Kino-Lorber will release Caterpillar and Wakamatsu's brilliant United Red Army both theatrically and on DVD in the U.S. Please support these releases.

Another upcoming release from Kino-Lorber is My Joy (Schastye Mo), one of my favorite films of 2011.

Their website is http://www.kinolorber.com

The Gift of Wakamatsu

blaq out, a French distributor, has recently released three DVD box sets containing a dozen films by legendary Japanese director Koji Wakamatsu. I say "legendary" because his legend does precede him and he is a truly original filmmaker who has produced a huge body of work over a fifty year period. Unfortunately, most of his films remain unseen in the West and many are not even available in Japan.

The features comprising the first volume of this sensational venture -- Violated Angels, The Embryo Hunts in Secret, Secrets Behind the Wall, and Go Go Second Time Virgin -- are subtitled in French only.

The features in the second volume -- Ecstasy of the Angels, Sex Jack, Running in Madness,Dying in Love, and Season of Terror -- have English as well as French subtitles.

The third volume's films -- Naked Bullet, Violent Virgin, Violence Without a Cause, and Shinjuku Mad -- are also subtitled in French and English.

The cause of the violence in Violence Without A Cause is frustration. Isn't it always?! The title is deliberately provocative. It's difficult to argue that violence has no cause. It's always an expression of something. In this strange, flawed work, three sexually frustrated men spend their days wishing life were different. They bemoan the fact that handsome men get more pussy, and rally against the limited options they see down the road.

In typical Wakamatsu style, these men begin a very informal "revolution" against the state of things by raping any girl they see and awkwardly propositioning those they have some association with. Their efforts don't bring much happiness, and they usually end up where they started -- in a tiny apartment with porno pictures for company.

The trio are a sorry, homely, and mostly unsympathetic lot. They whine constantly and botch every opportunity to get laid that comes along. Two survive on handouts from parents and one has a factory job. I couldn't quite decide what exactly Wakamatsu was saying about youth in this film. Was he criticizing their lack of drive? Or criticizing the rigid structure of Japanese society? Perhaps both. And both criticisms seem valid.

I couldn't help contemplating the human brain's lack of invention while watching this film. Yes, society is rigid and we are herded about like cattle from an early age, but aren't there ways to subvert the norm? Must we accept everything placed in front of us as absolute? Any situation can be changed if you're willing to chuck what's familiar to you.

The sad thing is, most people just accept the norm and complain occasionally.

Clearly, Wakamatsu doesn't accept shit!

This brave filmmaker and provocateur made many, many films about personal and political revolt and railed against the often moronic society we help shape with our sickening desire to conform.

As fascinating as the film is, it's handicapped by some unfortunate script contrivances. Out of the blue, a girl the boys went to primary school with just turns up at their apartment. Angered by her "haughty ego", they set out to rape her and "teach her a lesson". Of course, they screw up. A second contrivance involves the boys stalking a porno model who, unbelievably, invites them into her apartment without a care, leaves them alone while she goes shopping, then agrees to bed them all. Naturally, this seemingly perfect scenario comes undone and the boys take a beating from some local yakuza.

The conclusion is downbeat.

Exploring similar themes, but executed with greater dash and daring, is Season of Terror.

In this, two detectives camp out in a pretty girl's living room so they can observe a suspected terrorist in the  building opposite. Placing a listening device in the suspect's apartment allows them to listen in on his daily routine.

The routine of the suspect, a young man living with two gorgeous women, involves sleeping, eating, and fornicating in creative positions with the two lovely women. Sometimes the group romps as three, sometimes as two. When the women are working, the man (known affectionately as "Idle Sod") even romps on his own.

The detectives, who live ordered, traditional lives, become fascinated, then bored, then angry with the suspect. One constantly suggests they go around and beat the hell out of him simply because he's not living a "productive" life. The other is convinced that the suspect will eventually say something to convict himself.

How the suspect got two women to become his slaves is never explained. When he says "Beer!", the women bring him one. When he takes a crap, they wipe his butt. This guy has built himself a personal utopia where he's serviced like a king. When the women raise the subject of having a baby, he gets angry and broods like a teenager.

Wakamatsu doesn't let any cats out of the bag about the suspect until he gets a visit from a former colleague. The colleague preaches revolution and invites the suspect to join him in a protest, but the suspect tells him that revolution is pointless, and makes it clear that living with two pretty sex slaves is better than the end result of any revolution.

This fascinating tale is resolved in an unexpected way, and Wakamatsu's perspective on "Utopia" is thought-provoking.

Both films were surely made for next-to-no money and shot in confined spaces. They are black and white, although color is employed occasionally and very effectively.

Sex is a constant in Wakamatsu's world, and it is often depicted as something to chase when you're bored or in need of a temporary fix -- not unlike drugs. Ultimately, it doesn't deliver anything lasting or deep. It's just a very attractive and powerful narcotic.

Naked Bullet, from the third set, is the most interesting of this trio.  A yakuza flees from his boss with a young waitress and is tricked into returning to the fold. For his efforts, he is tortured and beaten, and she is raped and discarded like trash. Five years later, a similar scenario presents itself -- only this time, the ex-yakuza has learnt from his mistake. The director employs a subtle, documentary style and switches between color and black and white. The women in this film are gorgeous, and there is a plethora of nudity. Structured much more conventionally than many Wakamatsu pictures, and feeling more like noir than pink, it's a humble little gem from a truly maverick director.

The above paragraph, taken from my imdb review, doesn't touch on the fact that Wakamatsu made a number of brutal yakuza dramas that wouldn't have been out of place on the recent Nikkatsu Noir compilation from Criterion.

As usual, even this yakuza pic is stylistically adventurous and Wakamatsu-esque in every way. The director/writer's empathy for desperate, outmoded, lowlife characters is strong, as is the ever-present sexual component. Sex and rape are tied together and one always seems to lead inevitably to the other. The filmmaker's world is a world without guarantees where rebellion is fraught with its own consequences.

Upcoming from Wakamatsu, and already released in some parts of the world, is the highly praised Caterpillar. Beyond that will be a film based on a novel by Japanese political thriller writer Yoichi Funado. I can't wait for either of these.

These three Wakamatsu's volumes are highly recommended, as is supporting legitimate versions of them. If you're going to download them via torrents, then you have nobody to blame but yourself when the well for unseen cinema like this runs dry.

Distributor blaqout deserves much praise for stepping up to the plate and investing in this massive restoration and distribution of Wakamtsu titles. I hope many more volumes come to fruition.

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Please note that some of the graphics accompanying this blog entry are

not directly associated with the discussed content.

Wakamatsu's Caterpillar

I have been a disciple of Koji Wakamatsu for several decades, so it is with baited breath that I await the arrival of Kyatapira (Caterpillar).

The short story it is based on was written by Edogawa Rampo, probably Japan's most respected mystery and horror writer.

Rampo penned Caterpillar in 1939 when WWII was raging. The Japanese government banned the story, fearing that it would impact negatively on the country's war effort.

The story is about a solider who returns from the war without limbs. His wife is forced to care for him, and he wriggles about like a human caterpillar. He resembles the 'human torso'in Todd Browning's seminal Freaks ('32).

It's impossible to know whether Rampo saw Freaks before writing Caterpillar; the writer was certainly heavily influenced by American culture (he changed his name from Hirai Taro to honor Edgar Allen Poe), and much of his work has a Poe and Lovecraft influence. Elements of Freaks, based on the short story by Todd Robbins, Spurs, are present in much of Rampo's work; still, his tales are still very particular to the Japanese sensibility and often explore extreme fetishism (not an arena touched on as frequently in Western genre literature).

In Japanese culture, the depiction of deformities on-screen is, to this day, controversial. Teruo Ishii's Horrors of Malformed Men ('69), based on a Rampo story, was banned from being screened in Japan for years due to its focus on less-than-perfect, unfortunate human beings.

This is Wakamatsu's first true horror film, although his approach appears to be anything but conventional.

Wakamatsu, one of the original 'Godfathers of Pink' is enjoying a renaissance of sorts following the release of his exceptional United Red Army ('07). The French have recently released a stunning box set of his work, and I'm praying (not literally!) that a company like Criterion will release an English subtitled version of this exceptional set.

Controversy has surrounded Wakamatsu for years due to his 'anarchist' connections and uncompromising filmography.

Only recently I was privileged to watch his 13-nin renzoku bôkôma (The Man Who Attacked 13 People), a raw example of utter cinematic nihilism.

In my imdb review, the first to appear on that site about the film, I wrote:

The Violent Man Who Attacked 13 People (a loose translation) is deserving of infamy for it is one of the most nihilistic pink films ever made. A chubby, bicycle-riding rapist/killer dispatches 13 people (mostly women) in a cold, bloody, detached rampage. In the first 38 minutes, 8 people die. Koji Wakamatsu, one of the Godfathers of Pink, makes no concessions to anybody in this grim exercise. The killer unloads his gun into vaginas, a man's ass, arms, legs, and heads. The film appears to be a catalog of murder and rape. There is no humor and no let-up. Only a minimalist harmonica score is heard in the quieter moments between the attacks. Shot on grainy 16mm, the tone is similar to Yojiro Takita's 1983 film "Renzoku Boko", suggesting that Takita was heavily influenced by this film. The relentlessness of the narrative draws the viewer into a process where he (the viewer) becomes anxious about the next attack. As this is a film from the esteemed director of "Go Go Second Time Virgin" and the excellent "Violated Angels", a poetry emerges from the images that separates it from standard pink fare. Just as the film dryly documents the slaughter of more than a dozen people, so will I right now: 1 housewife is murdered and raped in her apartment, 1 young girl is murdered and raped by the river, a couple are stalked "Maniac"-style while making love in a car, 1 girl in uniform is abducted and abused, another couple are attacked, shot, and raped by the same river, 1 girl is invited to a rooftop where she is raped and shot, a couple are raped and shot in their apartment, 1 drunk girl is shot and raped, 1 girl is killed outside a toilet block, 1 girl is dragged into marshland and murdered and raped. A final girl, the killer's 14th, meets a different fate. It should be noted that the sequence where the killer stalks the lovers in a car has several shots that may have been duplicated by Bill Lustig in "Maniac"; one, in particular, of the killer peering through the window at the couple as they make love, is uncannily similar. Perhaps Lustig saw this film, though I doubt it -- it is quite obscure. This is certainly the first film I know of documenting the exploits of a dysfunctional, bicycle-riding serial rapist/killer and is one of the purest horror films I have seen. Highly, highly recommended. It is a type of cinema that many people fear, yet a small minority admire.

A filmmaker of immense talent and singular, brutal vision, Wakamatsu has directed close to 100 features since 1963.

Only Go Go Second Time Virgin and Ecstasy of the Angels have been widely seen in the US and UK.

The director has made dozens of notable features including Sex Jack, Violated Angels...

Dark Story of a Japanese Rapist, 100 Years of Torture - The History, Sacred Mother Kannon, The Embryo Hunts in Secret (one of the most evocative titles ever conceived)...

... and the magnificent Black Beast of Lust.

Wakamatsu's output is virtually an industry unto itself!

Caterpillar is of particular interest to me because I adore the short story it is based on, and share the author's fondness for freaks, deformities, and marginalized humans.

The story has been filmed already (and beautifully) by another brilliant Japanese director of extreme nihilism, Hisayasu Sato.

Rampo Jigoku (aka Rampo Noir, 05) was an impressive anthology pic based on the works of Rampo; Sato's 'Caterpillar' installment (titled Imomushi here) is the best of the bunch.

My imdb review ran as follows:

This is an anthology film comprising four stories. The third story, Caterpillar, directed by Hisayasu Sato (Lolita Vibrator Torture, Naked Blood) is the most horrific of the bunch. It plays like a big budget Guinea Pig episode and focuses on a man whose limbs have been lopped off by his wife. He wriggles about like a caterpillar, spewing bile and oozing pus, and enjoys a spot of cunnilingus now and then. The lighting is beautiful, the production design is handsome, and Sato has never directed anything so lush. The other three stories are also interesting, although the first story, about a devious mirror maker, is very slow. Final story, about a weird man's obsession with an actress, possesses a surreal quality and is dazzling to look at. The fourth story is so short it's hardly worth commenting on. All stories were inspired by Japan's Edgar Allen Poe, Edogowa Rampo, a splendid author of dark tales who was inspired enough by Poe to take his name. Terrific to see a film of such quality that is not afraid to offend or confront. I was reminded of Hideshi Hino's wonderful work while watching this and highly recommend you chase down Rampo Noir.

On February 15, Caterpillar will unspool for the first time at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Considering Wakamatsu's history, the original author's lasting status, and the high esteem in which I hold Sato's adaptation, perhaps you can understand why I am so primed for this cinematic event.

Wakamatsu truly personifies the filmmaker as anarchist and provocateur.

Without art like his, I'd rather be dead.