Horrors of Malformed Men (1969)

directed by Teruo Ishii

Japan

99 minutes

4 stars out of 5

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This has a reputation for being totally bonkers, which is well-earned and certainly bolstered by the name, although that factor probably isn't working in the film's favor as it sounds more like an ultra-trashy exploitation film than... whatever this is. While there is some stereotyping of mental illness, this isn't a movie where we're meant to be frightened of deformed people; the important thing to note is that the people have been malformed. "Malform" is used here as a verb.

Particularities of language aside, the other thing to know about this movie is that it is denser than it has any right to be, and - especially if you're using subtitles - you can't really look away for a minute or else you'll miss a part of the story. In the middle it does drag a bit and there are parts that don't feel absolutely essential, but at the beginning and towards the end when it turns into the world's biggest exposition dump, there's so much detail going on that viewing the whole thing is required to even vaguely understand it (and even then you might just... not). This is based on an Edogawa Rampo story, and it definitely has that feeling of being lifted from another source - I mentioned this in a review I have not made public yet, but filmed stories taken from books tend to have a kind of linear progression from event to event with a structure (even when they're uber-weird like this) that feels like it has backbone behind it. Maybe it's just the fact of being aware that what you're watching was written before that makes it feel like you kind of know what's going on, even if you don't. So while Horrors of Malformed Men is totally nutso, it does make sense in its own fast and loose way.

From the beginning the film shows the protagonist as shifting between multiple identities that we are fooled into assigning to him. We first see him in a cell with a bunch of wild, partially unclothed women, trying to avoid being stabbed, but then we're shown that the knife was a trick knife and the women mentally unsound, not actively malicious. Then we're shown that he is in fact also a prisoner in this harsh, medieval asylum, but he's not insane. The identity and origin of the protagonist is kept unclear to both us and to him, the search for his background being the impetus for the whole film, more or less. By chance he hears a woman singing a tune that he remembers from his own childhood, and after finding out that it's a lullaby sung only by people living in a specific coastal area, escapes the asylum and begins a journey to find his family that ultimately ends in horror and confusion.

But it doesn't happen that neatly. Events in this film progress through a haze of dream logic. The protagonist stumbles upon his twin, recently deceased, and somehow ends up assuming his identity in order to learn more about his family in the process, assimilating himself into his twin's family and love life. From there he is led to the island where he ultimately finds out the truth about what and who he is. This movie is notorious for starting out weird and then, after about forty minutes, right when you've gotten familiar with its strange and vaguely Giallo-esque brand of discomfiture, sticking out a metaphorical foot to trip you up. You don't think it can get any more bizarre, but the surprises just keep on coming.

I think this movie is fundamentally about identity and alienation from the "self", as well as alienation from the family and the loss of steady ground as one moves from the house of their birth to the larger world. This is delivered in a maximalist, extreme way, so that the gruesome imagery and the tragic story of the main character intertwine and enhance one another. This really isn't a movie that you watch and think "Oh, this is just excessive, this is way too much flesh and gore and animalistic cruelty". Everything has a purpose and the motif of tortured human bodies is an externalization of the internal struggle to find family and selfhood in a world where those things may just not exist. But because this movie is never content to stick to one thread and follow it, the plot changes several times to focus on several different things, especially in the last half-hour or so. There is a dramatic shift from weirdo montage of upsetting science experiments and a whacked-out cult leader type's idea of a new free world to basically a crime drama. A guy who had previously been a literal nobody in the story steps in all of a sudden and takes over the narrative. This is jarring, but no more so than anything else in this movie.

If nothing else, one can appreciate this just for the aesthetics. It's a tableau of deeply strange and inventive ways to make the human body look inhuman, all covered over in wet stringy gauze and white chalk powder. Gross and nasty and relentlessly confusing, body paint and fire, blood and hair and familial alienation. In fact, the look of it is so strong that it might require two watches, one to check out the scenery and another to actually understand what's going on. But even skimming it imparts the weird feeling of futility that I think it's meant to have. And no matter how weird I've made it sound, trust me, it's weirder.