Village of Doom | Blu-ray (Unearthed Films)
Director: Noboru Tanaka
Cast: Masato Furuoya, Misako Tanaka, Kumiko Oba, Isao Natsuyagi, Midori Satsuki
Running Time: 105 min.
By Paul Bramhall
The Tsuyama massacre remains one of the most harrowing mass murders in Japan, taking place on the night of 21st May 1938 in the rural village of Kamocho Kurami. After cutting off the electricity to the village shortly before midnight, a 21-year-old man named Mutsuo Toi proceeded to arm himself to the teeth, and after decapitating his grandmother with an axe, spent the next 30 minutes murdering 29 of his neighbours (roughly half the villages population), before killing himself at dawn. As a country whose cinematic output isn’t afraid of exploring the darker parts of the human condition, it perhaps shouldn’t be too surprising that, 45 years after the incident, in 1983 it was adapted for the screen in the form of Village of Doom.
What is a surprise is that Noboru Tanaka was chosen as the director, a filmmaker who was most well known for being part of the Nikkatsu studio’s stable of Roman Porno directors, essentially the studios own in-house brand of pink film. With a filmography full of titles like Sensual Classroom: Techniques in Love, Beauty’s Exotic Dance: Torture!, and Pink Salon: Five Lewd Women, Tanaka hardly stands out as the obvious choice to helm a slice of real-life crime that cost Continue reading
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