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Rampo Noir (2005)

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Posted on March 4, 2007 by Deni

Forget wells and videos and all manner of watery metaphors, Rampo Noir returns to the source with a refreshingly new bent. Based on stories by Japanese gothic horror author Edogawa Rampo, this collection of short films is both experimental and confronting in a way that cheap frights will never, ever be, and it’s actually not an easy thing to watch.

The anthology opens with Mars Canal, directed by Takeuchi, and for the first few minutes, I probably wasn’t the … (read more)

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Ichi the Killer (2001)

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Posted on January 25, 2006 by Alison

Remember the old architect sketch from Monty Python? A group of Masons offer a tender for an apartment building, and one of the architects presents designs for a slaughterhouse, justifying it thus: “This is not just a slaughterhouse. There’s no blood caked on the walls and flesh flying out of the windows incommoding passers-by with this one!”

That is so, so, not Ichi The Killer. There is blood caked on the walls. And the only reason there’s no … (read more)

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