Japanese Movies in the Year 2012

In my friend El Lobo's post on New Year's Resolutions back in January he mentioned wanting to watch more weird Japanese films.  I myself had already decided to embark upon a quest this year to watch an absurd amount of movies (read about that here) before El Lobo posted his New Year's thing, but I still found something worth emulating in his suggestion.  So heeding the advice (well, I was not technically "advised", but I took it that way), I made a decision awhile back to watch more Japanese movies this year.  Unlike Juan I am not limiting myself to the "weird" variety of Japanese film, but I'm not going to stay away from the offbeat stuff either.  OK, so truthfully most of my Japanese film consumption for this year has been of movies of the bloody/campy/horrific variety, but I wouldn't necessarily turn down an Asian rom-com if it crossed my path.  Get it?

So far my quest has led me to discover some true gems.  I've already talked about my experience with the 1990's horror film Splatter: Naked Blood a few posts back, but some other notable Japanese films I've watched this year would include Horrors of Malformed Men, an exquisite cult film from the 1960's that was banned in its native country, and Jigoku, a classic Japanese horror film about Hell and those who suffer in it.  There are more movies I could highlight of course, but I am sensing that such a list would be best left to a separate and longer blog post.  Seeing that my last few posts have been a bit bloated I'm trying to keep things brief tonight so I'll save that content for another day.

Horrors of Malformed Men

So perhaps then it's best that I end this post from a clip of a Japanese film that I watched recently, Takashi Miike's Dead or Alive.  Dead or Alive is essentially a yakuza film taken to absurdest heights and jam-packed with shock value and black comedy.  When I watched the movie the other day I was particularly floored by its opening sequence.  Seriously, that's how you grab a viewer's attention!  Watch what I'm talking about here.