Plot from Imdb: "We open with a dazed man in the middle of a cage of naked crazy women in a mental institution. We soon learn that he's an inmate as well. He is haunted by an odd children's lullaby. That night a strange bald man tries to kill him but instead our hero kills the bald man and escapes. Our hero hears the unusual lullaby and finds a circus performer who seems to come from the same remote place on the coast. He makes his way to the coast and finds out that a rich man who looks exactly like him has just died. He digs up the body and switches clothing becoming the dead man mistakenly buried too soon. Our hero then attempts to discover the strange secrets of the dead man's family while trying to imitate the deceased."
Another cinematic piece of insanity from Teruo Ishii (see his other movies here and here), here mixing all kind of influences from Ero Guro to the gothic fantastic detective story from Edogawa Rampo, the Japanese master writer of the bizarre, some Butoh, a Japanese choreography style of Gothic inspiration,with a classic SF touch ("The island of Dr Moreau" comes in mind immediately), including some subliminal images of atomic radiation deformities. After all, we're talking about a Japanese movie, and the atomic Armageddon is always present, in a way or another. Back to the movie: Ishii stars slowly and takes his time to develops the excessively complex story (but entertaining one) of a man who takes the place of a dead one to unveil the truth about his identity. After this part of the story, the fantastic elements of the malformed men come into play and the hallucinogenic erotico-grotesque flashy images are unleashed upon us as soon as the characters step foot on the mysterious island. From this point on, it's more a visual feast for the deviant spectator and an incredible journey into explaining a plot that didn't make any sense at the beginning. Ishii is going very far, including in the "sins" of his characters: kidnapping, rape, murder, enslavement, body modification, incests, no "sins" are left untouched. The ending is so absurd that it left me speechless.
Great classic for the sinners out there, this "Horrors of malformed Men" shows us again how important is Teruo Ishii to the deviant side of 20th century Japanese movie world.
Trailer:
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