Urotsukidoji: The Legend Of The Overfiend - by Liam R
Directed by Hideki Takayama. Based on the manga series created by Toshio Maeda. Published by Manga Entertainment. Certificate 18.
For those of you who probably didn’t know i.e. all of you, before the all-conquering behemoth that was StrawDonkeys.com came into existence, I had a fucking awful GeoCities site. It was a pretty decent design for someone who only had a handful of handcoding experience in HTML, but a lot of my articles on there were the absolute drizzling shit. This however, was the crowning jewel of my writing talents, possibly along with Retire Already! (the best thing I have ever written, soon to be re-printed here) just because of the whole ridiculous nature of what I was reviewing.
So let’s start from the beginning shall we? Having been introduced by Phil Sidebotham at the tender age of fifteen to the wonderful world of anime and by association manga, between the four of us (Schagen and Sam being the others) we started to amass quite the collection of classics: 3 x 3 Eyes (the first anime I ever saw), Akira, Cyber City Oedo 808 and Ultimate Teacher (well not Ultimate Teacher) but it was Urotsukidoji which caused the most curiosity. Despite being relative newcomers to the scene, this film already had a reputation before we had even seen it (and possibly understood it) and so it was me who had to persuade Phil’s older brother to buy it for us.
About two hours after watching it, I was blown away by what I’d seen. I was speechless as up to that point in my life, I really had never seen anything like it (I still haven’t, and hope to God that I never ever do, even though the new Exorcist movie apparently runs it close for reasons which will become clear as we go on) so I watched it again, just so I could get my head around it, and couldn’t. Even watching it for the purposes of this review was difficult as I (and it sounds really sad) was actually scared of watching it again. Not horror movie scared, more a psychological scared; a deep rooted fear not of ruining the mystique of the film, more of what the perspective of five years having not seen it would do to me. In fact this is one of the few films which scares me the more I watch it.
The reasons are many, and will be listed at the conclusion of the review, but there is a little story I would like to relate before we get into the warnings. Back when I was a fan boy, Manga Magazine ran a story on censorship. One of the central examples to the piece was inevitably Urotsukidoji. Now bear in mind that it was eight years ago when I read it, and I haven’t found a copy of the article since, but the gist of it was that Urotsukidoji was the worst film destined for a mainstream release (for the sake of argument I ain’t including porn here) in terms of content that the BBFC had had to deal with. In fact the chairman of the board of censors admitted to having nightmares for two weeks after the viewed the uncut version because of what he had seen while another admitted that the film had caused her to leave the room to throw up.
So with all this (and I’ll be taking the uncut version head-on in a later article) here are a few things I need to say before we get into it:
1), I’m reviewing the heavily butchered UK video release from 1992 as the censors have deemed this full-uncut version only suitable for sale from those ‘under the counter’ shops that you hear so much about. To be honest (and I’ll go into a tad more depth about it at the end of the review) it’s a much better movie knowing exactly what they did leave out, and the only way to see the movie and it’s sequel in their full, perverse uncut glory is from copies in mainland Europe or from America (but possibly not Canada).
2) Most important point this one: This review is in no way, shape or form suitable for kids. Sorry to ram the point home, but if you’re younger than say, 16, please don’t carry on, read the review get the video and have a wank, because that’s not the fucking point. This review is a big fat condemnation of the film, and I don’t want any angry letters from any parents saying that their child is now morally corrupt because of what I wrote. This disclaimer isn’t to keep my conscience clear, I’m seriously not kidding when I say that what lies within isn’t suitable for kids (or anyone else for that matter).
With that out of the way grab a stiff drink, a sick bag, take a deep breath and follow me into a nightmare…