HORRORS OF MALFORMED MEN

Director Teruo Ishii / 1969 / Japan

“Taps into the country's post-nuclear trauma so audaciously that people fled theaters in disgust upon its release.” - Midnight Eye

Consistently banned on video and DVD since its 1969 release, and finally gaining the worldwide cult following it so deserves, Teruo Ishii's Horrors of Malformed Men (based on a novel by Edogawa Rampo) is one of the most wonderfully realised pieces of pulp fiction to ever come out of Japan. A bizarre, disturbing dreamscape of the erotic-grotesque, the film takes us into the unique mind of the prolific and eccentric filmmaker still known in Japan as the king of cult.

Encompassing an asylum escapee, his doppelganger and a remote island populated by creatures from a mad scientist's lab, this film is Ishii's long-forgotten and most controversial classic.

Features an unforgettably visceral lead performance by Butoh founder Hijikata Tatsumi.

“A dreamlike outpouring of transgressive imagery.” - New York Times


D Teruo Ishii P Kanji Amao, Shigeru Okada S Teruo Ishii, Masahiro Kakefuda WS Toei L Japanese w/English subtitles TD 35mm/1969

Back To Index