Rampo Noir Blu-ray brings together four radically distinct visions inspired by the work of Edogawa Rampo, Japan’s most influential writer of macabre, mystery, and erotic-grotesque fiction. Produced by the team behind Ichi the Killer and Uzumaki, this audacious anthology transforms Rampo’s unsettling themes into a kaleidoscope of psychological horror, body distortion, obsession, and fractured identity, filtered through the voices of four singular filmmakers.
 
In Mars’s Canal, visual artist Suguru Takeuchi crafts an abstract meditation on duality as a man confronts a distorted version of himself reflected in a circular pond. Akio Jissoji, a key figure of the Japanese New Wave and a longtime Ultraman director, brings his signature stylized minimalism to Mirror Hell, a tale of madness rooted in reflections and warped perception. Cult provocateur Hisayasu Sato delivers the anthology’s most harrowing segment with Caterpillar, a brutally intimate portrait of a mutilated war veteran trapped in a marriage defined by cruelty and sexual domination. Finally, manga artist Atsushi Kaneko makes his directorial debut with Crawling Bugs, an obsessive psychological thriller centered on voyeurism and power dynamics.
 
Featuring an exceptional ensemble cast including Tadanobu Asano and Ryuhei Matsuda, Rampo Noir is a bold cinematic tribute to the erotic grotesque tradition that defined Edogawa Rampo’s legacy. Arrow Video presents the film for the first time outside Japan on Blu-ray, loaded with extensive interviews, archival material, and a feature-length making-of documentary.
 
directed by: Akio Jissoji, Atsushi Kaneko, Hisayasu Sato, Suguru Takeuchi
starring: Tadanobu Asano, Ryuhei Matsuda, Yuko Daike, Tomoya Nakamura, Mikako Ichikawa, Susumu Terajima
2005 / 134 min