Japanese Cinema Eclectics

FILM: HORRORS OF MALFORMED MEN (KYOFU KIKEI NINGEN)
DIRECTED BY TERUO ISHII, WRITTEN BY MASAHIRO KAKEFUDA AND TETSUO ISHII, WITH TERUO YOSHIDA, MINORU OKI, YUKIE KAGAWA, ASAO KOIKE, TERUKO YUMI, MITSUKO AOI, AND TATSUMI HIJIKATA. 1969, 99 MINS.
Language: Introduction by Donald Richie in English
Film in Japanese (film to be followed by a Q&A moderated by Donald Richie)
Japanese Cinema Eclectics official site

HORRORS OF MALFORMED MEN

(Kyofu Kikei Ningen)
"Transgressive. Disturbing. Depraved. Enter the mad world of Teruo Ishii and submerge yourself in the shocking fantasies of a malformed mind - the greater unsung classic in the history of cult cinema. Banned for decades! The most notorious Japanese horror film even made." Thus hype for this famous but unseen film. A young medical student, abducted into an insane asylum, takes the place of a deceased brother he never knew he had, and escapes to confront his mad father on the mysterious island where men (and women) are malformed and mutilated. Based on the stories of Rampo Edogawa, the finished film was disliked, neglected and eventually banished by the studio that made it, but is now famous as the only commercial film appearance of Tatsuki Hijikata, founder of the Butoh dance movement, and - as both the insane and the malformed - his troupe.

This single showing (the original Japanese with English subtitle) is made possible by the gracious permission of Toei Motion Picture Company and Synapse Film (USA), Panic House Entertainment.

Donald Richie

Named by TIME magazine, "the dean of Japan's art critics," and acknowledged as the foremost authority on Japanese cinema, Donald Richie has also written widely - some forty books in all - on other aspects of the country and its people. The Inland Sea has been called a classic and its film version has won prizes at international film festivals as well as the National Geographic Earth Award. His Public People, Private People has been called "unforgettable" by Tom Wolfe and of his two collections of essays, A Lateral View and Partial Views, Susan Sontag has said: "Donald Richie writes about Japan with an unrivaled range, acuity, and wit."

Richie has lived in Japan for most of his life. Arriving on New Year's Day, 1947, he worked as feature-writer and film critic for The Pacific Stars and Stripes. After graduating from Columbia University in 1953, he returned to Japan as film citic for The Japan Times. He has written for Newsweek, The Nation, Variety, The New York Times, The Guardian, Harper's, Atlantic Monthly, and all major films magazines. In addition he presented the first retrospective of the Japanese film director Yasujiro Ozu at the 1962 Berlin Film Festival and has since acted as guest director of the Telluride Film Festival, and served on the juries at the Hawaii, Lacarno, Thessaloniki, and Kerala Festivals. In addition to writing a column for The Japan Times, lecturing around the world, and continuing to lend his distinctive voice to Japanese studies, Donald Richie teaches film at Temple Universityfs Japan Campus.

Presented by the Institute of Contemporary Japanese Studies
Temple University, Japan Campus in Association with SuperDeluxe