Mystery of Rampo, The (1994)
Country: Japan
Director: Rintaro Mayuzumi, Kazuyoshi Okuyama
Producer: Kazuyoshi Okuyama
Writer: Yuhei Enoki, Kazuyoshi Okuyama, Edogawa Rampo
Cast: Masahiro Motoki, Naoto Takenaka, Michiko Hada
Running Time: 100 Min
Plot: Edogawa Rampo is a writer whose latest work is censored by the government, deemed too disturbing and injurious to the public to be allowed to be published. However, after burning his drafts, his publisher shows him a newspaper with an account of events just like his forbidden story. As the film progresses, fantasy and reality intermingle in a tale that draws heavily on influences from Poe and Stoker’s Dracula. The film’s strongly Expressionistic direction skillfully combines a variety of media (animation, computer-generated imagery, grainy black-and-white fast film stock, color negatives) for artistic effect.
A movie of very complicated pedigree, released on writer Edogawa Rampo’s century celebration day in two radically different versions. Neither version is too good. Actor Naoto Takenaka is great as writer Rampo, but the movie itself is boring. Visually speaking, the film is much too simple, and the story never really pans out to be anything interesting. Basically, Rampo gets sucked into one of his own stories. But he never gets too deeply enmeshed in the machinations of the plot, and his experiences and that of his alter-ego, Detective Akechi, never cross paths.
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