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| From http://zardoz.a.ltrbxd.com/resized/film-poster/1/2/6/3/8/ 6/126386-the-curse-of-kazuo-umezu-0-230-0-345-crop.jpg |
Director: Naoko Omi
Screenplay: Shiira Shimazaki
Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles
Kazuo Umezu is an intriguing horror manga author of immense acclaim
in his country, one that I've not been able to get into yet as I have Junji Ito. Umezu is up for a few English translated editions of his work in
the same hardbacked releases Ito has
had in the UK. His work from the images viewable online are suitably gruesome
and not for the squeamish, heavily stylised and exaggerated. Umezu himself is as memorable in
appearance as well, a very gaunt thin elderly man in a Where's Wally red and white stripped jumper. Apparently he also
lives in a house that's red and white stripes as well, adding through the
creator a personality for his work as much as Ito's drawn version of himself being turned insane by spirals works
so well reading Uzumaki (1998-9).
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| From https://40.media.tumblr.com/942886254dfe4fb443567451 ba300eff/tumblr_mvoch9J0s91qzpdnho1_500.png |
The anime is two stories based on
Umezu's work. The first is of a
schoolgirl who fears the new female transfer student is a vampire, waking up
one morning with a small puncture wound in the centre of her neck. The second
is four girls going into a supposedly haunted house. They don't hide that
they're ghoulish stories, a twist in both with tones as if you could tell them
to another personally around a campfire for a good chill. There's not a lot on
the bones of the anime in terms of greater meanings, but the stories are appropriately
macabre.
Visually, the anime looks very
unique from others from this era, transforming Umezu's illustration style into moving figures. The female cast who
are central to each story manage to have even bigger eyes than the
stereotypical anime heroine, and striking use of black lines and shadows is
prominent for moments of horror, particularly for character's horrified
reactions. The music, starting off with slightly cheesy synth, is also
memorable. The synth itself gets creepy in its tininess as it goes along, but
especially in the second story you can pick up some clever music cue choices
for creating tension, from atonal jazz noise for a scene of terror where the
haunted house's original owner makes themselves known, to an eerie
reinterpretation of The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky using what the music director might've
chosen as the most sinister sounding bells possible. Even for this utterly
obscure straight-to-video anime, which I and many can only find online in a VHS
rip with fan added subtitles, there's ingenuity in the production nonetheless.
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| From http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v517/richardsplash /INVASIAN/INVASIAN-curseofkazuoumezu-02.jpg |
The stories themselves run with
the body horror and general grossness that follows on from (blog entry #7) Twilight of the Dark Master (1997), not
of the school of Ringu (1998). The
first story eventually becomes overt body horror with an added twist of an
unknown internal evil, a giant teeth mouth, spiders crawling on flesh, and a
somewhat startling appearance and use of
a tentacle like tongue I didn't remember last time viewing this anime,
encouraging the animators to draw the most gross distortions of the human body
possible. The second story is more ridiculous in the amount of blood split,
including a bloody teddy bear, but seeing a limb pop off like if one pulled a
leg off a Barbie doll, especially with the character designs, is creepy in
itself.
Naturally Umezu's own work is as appropriately disgusting looking at un-translated
panels, but if there's one flaw with this adaptation, it's that while even when
he's utterly vile in some of the images he draws, the panels can also be
beautiful in a perverse way at the same time, like with Junji Ito and other manga authors who develop personalities to
their horror writing and the drawings. This is not like the infamous anime
adaptation Midori (1992) which managed to transfer an entire aesthetic based on
the early years of Showa Era Japan as much as the original manga creator's
style into cels, but at least Umezu may
have appreciated the faithfulness to his work shown here. Even the strange
minute long short between the stories turning the characters in the first
story, including the monster, into chibi cartoon figures doesn't feel outside
the tone but keeping within the grim glee of the material.
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| From http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v517/richardsplash/ INVASIAN/INVASIAN-curseofkazuoumezu-03.jpg |
Sadly there hasn't been many
other adaptations into anime of Umezu's
work, barring a couple from the late seventies and eighties. The utter
obscurity of this particular title somewhat emphasises this. It's a shame as,
while there have been live action adaptations, this anime sets up a Tales of the Crypt tone that could've
gone further. It even has a mascot who is a skinny goth-like ghoul bookending
the anime, functioning in the same position as the Crypt Keeper but with a
quieter, unsettling manner. An in-joke of the second story characters watching
"The Curse of Kazuo Umezu" during their movie night, food wrapping
littering the floor when the lights are turned back on, emphasises how this
could've been a fun straight-to-video anthology series if it had legs. What
exists in itself in terms of quality is a curiosity only, but considering the
lack of horror anime in comparison to other genres likes romance or sci-fi, it
still has virtue to it and would've been a suitably watchable series if more
episodes were ever to have existed.
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| From http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v517/richardsplash/ INVASIAN/INVASIAN-curseofkazuoumezu-04.jpg |
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