The eight “ero-guro” films Ishii Teruo made for Toei from 1968 to 1973 have largely defined his “king of cult” reputation in Japan and abroad - but none more so that Horror of the Malformed Men. Based on stories by Edogawa Ranpo (Hirai Taro, 1894-1965) - who borrowed his name and aesthetics from Edgar Allen Poe - the film is Ishii at his weird, outlandish best and is frequently revived in Japan. But though his most notorious work, Horror of the Malformed Men is not available in Japan on video - Toei does not want to deal with the protests that would surely greet its appearances on the shelves. “Certain groups object to its depiction of disabled people,” explained one Toei executive.
The film, however, is less the Japanese companion to Tod Browning’s controversial Freaks than Ishii’s interpretation of Edogawa’s bizarre artistic vision, aided by the performance of Hijikata Tatsumi (1929-1986), the founding father of the Butoh school of dance - and the most of brilliantly “deformed” of the film’s underworld creatures.
The film begins as an offbeat murder mystery. Hirosuke (Yoshida Teruo), a medical student working at a mental hospital, learns that Hatsuyo (Yumi Teruko), a girl circus performer of his acquaintance, has been murdered. Determined to find the killer, he takes a train to the Hokuriku region, by the Sea of Japan. On the way he reads in the newspaper about another death, this time of a close friend, Komoda Genzaburo. Meanwhile, Genzaburo’s father Komoda Saigoro (Hijikata), a mysterious chap with webbed fingers, has left for an uninhabited island.
Posing as Genzaburo, Hirosuke enters the Komoda house. Oddly, Genzaburo’s wife Chiyoko, daughter Shizuko and steward Hirukawa all accept him as the real thing. Then Chiyoko is killed and Genzaburo/Hirosuke take the daughter and servants to the island. At the beach they are met by Saigoro, who leads them into a deep, dank cave. There they encounter Hideko (Yumi Teruko, in a double role), a creature who looks uncannily like Hatsuyo, but isn’t quite human. The strangeness, they soon learn to their horror and dismay, is just beginning.
As Saigoro, Hijikata is the film’s most impressive “special effect.” With his scraggly beard, long, tangled hair and flowing robe, he has the look of a mad prophet of an unholy faith. Moving across the rocks of his island kingdom with an crab-like resolve and creepy, angular grace, he obscures the boundary between the real and the unreal, the human and inhuman. He not only knows more than he is telling, but more than we want to imagine. Smile or shiver at his crazy man act, you won’t easily get him out of your dreams.
Mark Schilling