THE MYSTERY OF RAMPO Movie Review

Legendary mystery writer Hirai Taro, whose pen name was Edogawa Rampo, was considered Japan's Edgar Allan Poe (pronounce Rampo's entire name slowly and phonetically—get it?); he's propelled into his own stories in this lush, slightly mad, visually stunning fantasy. Set in the period just prior to World War II. Rampo (Naoto Takenaka) is despondent when his story about a woman suffocating her husband in a trunk is censored by the government, and then he is stunned when a newspaper reports an almost identical murder. When he investigates on his own, Rampo discovers that the widow is a dead ringer for his fictional character—at least the way he imagined her. Soon fact and fantasy collide in increasingly disturbing—and erotically obsessive—ways, culminating in a truly mind-blowing finale steeped in apocalyptic special effects. (The telling of Rampo's original murder story at the film's opening is done in a hauntingly animated—or anime—sequence.) The film's original director was hauled off the project and replaced by producer Kazuyoshi Okuyama, but the final result is a seamless, visionary whole. (The widescreen images deserve to be seen in a letterboxed version.) Akira Senju's lush, dreamy score was performed by the Czech Philharmonic, and it is available on a beautifully engineered CD.

NEXT STOP … Odd Obsession, Kwaidan, Vertigo

1994 (R) 96m/C JP Naoto Takenaka, Michiko Hada, Masahiro Motoki, Teruyuki Kagawa, Mikijiro Hira; D: Kazuyoshi Okuyama; W: Kazuyoshi Okuyama, Yuhei Enoki; C: Yasushi Sasakibara; M: Akira Senju. VHS HMK