Horrors Of Malformed Men

Recounting the plot of The Horror of Malformed Men is futile. Despite being narrative in nature, it ascribes to no apparent logic. Ishii and his co-screenwriter Masahiro Kakefuda have strung together elements from a variety of Edogawa Rampo works, including The Human Chair (Ningen Isu), The Stroller in the Attic (Yaneura No Sanposha), The Twins (Soseiji) and the title story, and fashioned them around an amnesiac young doctor's search for his missing father. The father, a Dr. Moreau-esque deranged scientist, lives on an island where he has created a private dominion populated by horrible hybrids of man and beast, the by-products of a wish-turned-obsession to cure his disfigured wife.

An insane asylum, psychadelic dancers in silver body paint, siamese twins, a pond full of beautiful naked women who are fed from a boat like so many koi, a bizarre family mystery, matching swastika scars on the feet of two different men -one alive and one dead, second-hand cannibalism via crustacean, women sewed to sheep, an island of custom made freaks, an murder scene that was ripped off wholesale for use in a James Bond film (You Only Live Twice), and a revenge plot so insanely convoluted that it must have influenced Oldboy are just some of the head-spinning madness "The Horrors of Malformed Men" has to offer.