This film was a huge disappointment for me. I had purchased this at the store. The plot sounded very familiar to the one in the old Hitchcock movie called "The Rope" or "Rope". Unfortunately, the nearest it got to being like that was what was written as a description on the DVD case.
The film is beautifully shot. I give the cinematography an A+, but other than that, it was just boring and senseless. The film takes place during the early stages of the Showa period in Japan. This was the time that Hirohito was beginning to build up the military and begin a bid for World Conquest.
The film concentrates on Edogawa Rampo, who is a writer. His latest book has just been banned and he is instructed to destroy the book. The story contained therein is about a woman who locks her husband up in like a Japanese Hope Chest and lets him die in there. Suddenly, a woman in the real world, has possibly duplicated this very murder with her husband and it leads Rampo to investigate because no one has ever read the story since it was banned. As he begins his investigation, he ends up falling in love with the villianess or heroine, depending on your point of view.
Rampo then yields to his imagination and begins writing a continuing story of the woman, and uses his literary alter ego, Kogoro Akechi, kind of a super detective, to investigate the woman. Now this is where the movie gets real weird. Akechi, parachutes down from a plane and lands near a mansion by the seaside. The woman, Shizuko, is played by the incredibly beautiful, Michiko Hada, who is like a prisoner to this vampire like, crossdressing weirdo that owns the estate.(Spoiler coming) The old crossdresser has a kinky twisted side in the fact he likes to tie Shizuko up at night, make her watch porn films, and rape Shizuko, while smearing his Tammy Faye Bakker makeup all over her lovely back.
Now the supposed hero, Akechi, just watches this old weirdo do this and does not lift a finger to help the girl. To me, this is a serious plot flaw. It seemed like he should have stopped this nonsense, rather then just look on like a spectator.
Then some really weird stuff happens, including Shizuko asking Akechi, to climb into another Japanese Hope Chest and die. I won't tell you what he decides, I will leave it to your imaginations.
This movie is a waste of time. It was supposedly very successful in Japan, and perhaps it has something that is appealing to Japanese culture. My opinion is that it is boring, senseless, and like the King with the Invisible Clothes, absolutely buck naked. It is suppose to be a movie, but it's not. Just a random selection of scenes.
I liked the cinematography, the costumes, and Michiko Hada. The actor who played Rampo, Naoto Takenaka, was good in his part. I just felt the movie did not have organized flow to it at all, not even the standard beginning, middle, and end.
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