by Chris MaGee
Anyone who’s read the Pow-Wow blog knows that I have mixed feelings about the predominance of exploitation and softcore porn films being released on DVD in North America while the works of directors like Akira Ogata and Naomi Kawase languish in obscurity. Still, when I saw this news over at Twitch this morning my heart skipped a beat. Distributor Mondo Macabro, who really do put the “X” in exploitation, will be releasing Noboru Tanaka’s 1976 Edogawa Rampo-based roman porno film “The Watcher in the Attic”.
Ever since I read Jasper Sharp’s review of “Watcher” a couple years back I was intrigued. The film, based on stories written by famed Japanese mystery/ macabre author Edogawa Rampo that the critics dubbed as “ero-guro-nansensu (erotic, grotesque nonsense)” follows Goda, a landlord who spies on surreal sexual escapades the tenants of his rooming house (including women dressed in animal hides and amorous but downright spooky clowns). While I’ve obviously never clapped eyes on this film myself I have seen my share of Rampo adaptations and they are either disastrous (The Mystery of Rampo, Blind Beast vs. Killer Dwarf) or visionary (Rampo Noir, Gemini), and this looks like it has the potential to fall into the latter category.
Judge for yourself by checking out the trailer for “The Watcher in the Attic” over at Twitch, but beware… it’s not work safe.
Anyone who’s read the Pow-Wow blog knows that I have mixed feelings about the predominance of exploitation and softcore porn films being released on DVD in North America while the works of directors like Akira Ogata and Naomi Kawase languish in obscurity. Still, when I saw this news over at Twitch this morning my heart skipped a beat. Distributor Mondo Macabro, who really do put the “X” in exploitation, will be releasing Noboru Tanaka’s 1976 Edogawa Rampo-based roman porno film “The Watcher in the Attic”.
Ever since I read Jasper Sharp’s review of “Watcher” a couple years back I was intrigued. The film, based on stories written by famed Japanese mystery/ macabre author Edogawa Rampo that the critics dubbed as “ero-guro-nansensu (erotic, grotesque nonsense)” follows Goda, a landlord who spies on surreal sexual escapades the tenants of his rooming house (including women dressed in animal hides and amorous but downright spooky clowns). While I’ve obviously never clapped eyes on this film myself I have seen my share of Rampo adaptations and they are either disastrous (The Mystery of Rampo, Blind Beast vs. Killer Dwarf) or visionary (Rampo Noir, Gemini), and this looks like it has the potential to fall into the latter category.
Judge for yourself by checking out the trailer for “The Watcher in the Attic” over at Twitch, but beware… it’s not work safe.
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3 comments:
It's a good film -- most of Tanaka's work in the 70s was strong.
You might find this of interest.
no love for 'assault! jack the ripper' ?...
i'm still waiting on someone to tell us just what mondo macabro picked up - from the titles written at the bottom of the artwork, first seen kicking around a week or so back, both of this initial releases in october are for separate lines of films of slightly different potential sub-sections.
I saw about "Assault! Jack the Ripper!" as well, but "watcher was the one I was really excited about. Yeah, I went on Mondo's site and couldn't find any mention of the other films they picked up. Strange...
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