User:Paleface Jack/Horrors of Malformed Men

Horrors of Malformed Men (江戸川乱歩全集　恐怖奇形人間) is a 1969 Japanese horror film directed and co-written by Teruo Ishii. Based on the novels Strange Tale of Panorama Island (パノラマ島奇談) and The Demon of the Lonely Isle (孤島の鬼) by Edogawa Rampo, the film was produced by Toei Company.

Plot
The film opens with Hirosuke Hitomi (Teruo Yoshida), a young man locked in an asylum with no memory of his past or how he came to be locked up, although he believes himself to be sane. After killing a man in self-defense, Hirosuke escapes from the sanitorium and stops by a passing circus. There, he hears a lullaby sung by the circus girl Shodai, which he recognizes as from his childhood. Before he is able to question the girl, she is murdered in front of him, and is forced to flee. On the run, Hirosuke boards a train heading to Hokuriku, there he sees the obituary for one Genzaburo Komoda (Yoshida), who bears an uncanny resemblance to himself. Hirosuke pretends to be Genzaburo by concocting a miraculous recovery story. Hirosuke begins to carefully navigate through Genzaburo's life, including the dead man's wife and mistress, attempting to discover his own identity. He learns that Genzaburo's father, Jogoro, was born with a deformity and entrusted his house to his butler, Hirukawa. Jogoro now lives on an uninhabited island off the coast, where he has isolated himself for many years in an effort to perform research. Soon after, Chiyoko, Genzaburo's wife, is murdered, and Hirosuke forces Hirukawa to take him, his distantly related daughter Shizuko, and his servant to the island.

Jogoro was trying to create his own paradise on an island by creating deformed humans. There, a girl named Hideko who looks exactly like the first generation was made into an artificial Siamese twin with a man. It is revealed that Hirosuke is Genzaburo's younger brother, and he went to medical school so that Jogoro could create a deformed human. Kosuke confesses to Jogoro that he is Kosuke, not Genzaburo, and performs surgery on Hideko, who has fallen in love with her, to return her body to its original state. However, Hideko had a secret about her birth.

Hideko was Jogoro's wife who hated cheating, and the child she gave birth to after being raped by a hunchbacked man, and Hirosuke and Hideko were brother and sister. Jogoro takes out a pistol and asks Hirosuke for help in producing a deformed human, but the manservant is actually Kogoro Akechi, and the pistol is already out of bullets. Akechi reveals that Hirukawa, the butler, was in a mistress relationship with Shizuko, that he betrayed Jogoro, and accidentally killed Chiyoko when he tried to kill Genzaburo. Realizing the impossibility of the plan, Jogoro commits suicide, and Hideko and Kousuke, who have fallen in love, become fireworks and scatter in the air.

Cast

 * Teruo Yoshida as Hirosuke Hitomi/Genzaburô Komoda
 * Tatsumi Hijikata as Jogoro
 * Yukie Kagawa as Shizuko
 * Teruko Yumi as Hideko/Hatsuyo
 * Mitsuko Aoi as Toki Komoda
 * Asao Koike
 * Michiko Kobata as Chiyoko Komoda
 * Minoru Ōki as Kogorô Akechi/Manservant

Development
Development for Horrors of Malformed Men began in the spring of 1969, when Toei producer Shigeru Okada entrusted director Teruo Ishii to make an original "masterpiece of autumn" and soon listed the project on Toei's annual lineup roster. Okada then began preparing the project, under the title Hell (地獄), planning for it to feature the deity of death Yama and Edo period Touken slasher Asaemon Yamada. Although a budget was set for the film, subsequent changes to the film would significantly increase the projected budget, and the film was eventually scrapped. Brainstorming ideas for potential film projects, Ishii proposed the idea for Malformed Men, based on the writings of Japanese author Edogawa Rampo, while co-screenwriter Masahiro Kakefuda alternately suggested basing the project on Yatsuhakamura by Masafumi Yokomizo; eventually the two agreed to Ishii's suggestion.

Prior to Malformed Men, Ishii had worked with Toei, directing nine separate erotic gore films over the course of a year and a half, the first of these films was Tokugawa Onna Keizu, released in 1968.

Home media
On August 28, 2007, Synapse Films and Panik House gave Horrors of Malformed Men a mass-market release on region-1 DVD.

Later reception
The film is considered a precursor to Toei's ventures into the "Pinky violent" style in the early 1970s.