Môjû tai Issunbôshi

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0374076/
a.k.a. Blind Beast vs. Dwarf
Welcome to the wicked sureal world of Edogawa Ranpo, the legend who wrote Môjû.
Môjû tai Issunbôshi is based on "The Dark Eyes Of London" By Edgar Wallace who later on was rewritten by Rampo Edogawa.

Monzô Kobayashi (Ririi Furankii) is a writer who stumbles upon Ranko Mizuki (Mutsumi Fujita) who dances at a burlesque show where also some transvestites are on.
Ranko is beautiful and dances and sing, she gets a lot of attention from the semihorny crowd (all men), everyone seems to enjoy the show, except one man who is blind.

Monzô later on that night sees a dwarf that has something in his bag, a hand of a woman, so he follows him but looses tracks on him. Later Monzô tries to solve the mystery while the blind man has allready captured Ranko.
Hisayoshi Hirayama Môjû/blind man has Ranko chained up and beets her with peace of wood…

























When Môjû (the 1969 classic) was a great story about lust, longing for a womans body/adoring the several bodyparts of it and madness, Môjû tai Issunbôshi is more of a sad story where a bullied dwarf seeks revenge and the blind man is as ”insane” as in the original movie, he is insane for real this time however.
There is a severed hand that causes a lot of trouble for the people, just like in -- And Now the Screaming Starts! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069715/

the dwarf being bullied around













This ain´t by any stretch of your imagination as great as Môjû is (Môjû is easily one of the top 20 movies of all time in my book). It lacks some of the sympathy for the blind man that was slowly built up in the 1969 classic, it also twistes to much in my opinion between various carachters. The acting is from time to time good and sometimes acted a bit cheesy (attentional or not I don´t know), it has some strange scenes - due to the fact that it was a lowbudget set. It was shot in 2001, had a teathrical release in 2004 and hit the DVD market in 2006.
A movie that has so long time between actual cut to releases on the white screen or DVD most of the time witness that the movie isn´t that great.

So is this one bad? Is it awful? I would say it is interresting becouse the potential is there, but the result wasn´t satisfying allthough it starts slow and increases towards the end it never reaches some kind of climax.
Môjû tai Issunbôshi is more of a detective drama, allthough it was the first film in Britain to receive the H (for Horror) certificate.

On the plus scale is that I actually fond it hard to believe this one was made in 2001, all the acters, the cinematography is spot on from a 70s movie and some of the poor(?) editing makes it more autenthic as a 70s detective movie.
Also there is a scene where Ranko is taking of her dress and drinks wine, the blind man is on the floor, she drools out the wine all over her chest so it drips down in the mouth of the happy blind man.














Môjû tai Issunbôshi was the last movie that the legendary director Teruo Ishii did. So by that I wanna take the time to salute him and pay my respect. Maby you should to?

Official Trailer
http://www.nipponcinema.com/trailers/blind-beast-vs-killer-dwarf/

Official site
http://www.fjmovie.com/ishii/mojuvs/