Hirosukie,a young medical student, finds himself imprisoned in a insane asylum where he has vivid and unnerving dreams. He is shocked one day to see a deceased man in the newspaper who has his splitting image, further complicating the puzzle of Hirosukie's forgotten past. Determined to learn the nature of these strange events, Hirosukie escapes from the asylum and takes the identity of the dead man in order to discover the mystery behind his weird doppelganger. Teruo Ishii's The Horrors of Malformed Men is essentially a Japanese version of the Island of Dr. Moreau, though it's by far the most unhinged and subversive version I've ever seen. What Hirosuki discovers is that his family is responsible for surgically turning normal human beings into deformed monsters, plunging himself into the depths of murder, incest, and madness. The Horrors of the Malformed Men is a subversive work of art and Ishii injects the film with a ton of surrealist imagery and atmospherics which give the film a very ominous tone. The imagery of this film is simultaneously grotesque and surreally beautiful being far ahead of its time when it comes to macabre cinema. The make-up work is top notch, with an abundance of unique and creepy designs that are only elevated in creepiness by Ishii's cinematography and various color filters. All that being said the film never was able to reach me on a sentimental Teruo Shii's The Horrors of Malformed Men does take a long time to get going, suffering from a tepid pacing early on, but once Hirosuki reaches the Island the film becomes something special and should be seen by all fans of macabre. 7.5/10
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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