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Released by: Panik House
Released on: 8/15/2006
Director: Teruo Ishii
Cast: Tadanobu Asano, Tetsuro Tamba, Kazuhiko Kanayama, Yuko Fujimori, Miki Fujitani
Year: 1998
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The Movie:
One of the late, great Teruo Ishii's last films was Screwed, a big screen adaptation of a semi-autobiographical comic book from Yoshiharu Shiga albeit one that's been heavily skewed through Ishii's perverse world view.
The film follows the misadventures of Tsube (Tadanobu Asano of Ichi The Killer and Taboo), a cartoonist who has seen better days. His artwork doesn't bring in much of an income and so he's financially dependant on his live in girlfriend, Kuniko (Miki Fujitani), but she treats him like dirt, and is disrespectful enough to have one of her ex-boyfriends spend the night in their house while they take the bed and leave Tsube to his own devices. This all comes to a serious boil when Tsube finds out that one of her numerous one night stands has resulted in her becoming pregnant with another man's child, and so he decides to kill himself by throwing back a jar of pills.
It doesn't work. Tsube, in a less than ideal mental state, leaves the hospital and from here goes on a bizarre journey through Earth, Hell and his own subconcious in a strange attempt to make sense of his life and find some sort of direction through this mess he's found himself in.
A fairly grim and completely weird film, Screwed is more of a black comedy than anything else and certainly not the nasty exploitation movies that make up his best known output (though there's plenty of nudity and questionable material in here). Bleak to the point of absurdism, the film alternates between sombre drama and surrealist head scratching all while Asano remains the coolest man on the planet. He handles even the strangest material in the film quite well and he makes it look easy in the process. His frustration and indifference are believable and uncannily sincere and he brings some very unexpected physical comedy to the part that works far more effectively than it has any right to. In turn, it's interesting to see what happens to his character particularly when he starts interacting with women other than Kuniko in the later portion of the film as his past has obviously left some pretty deep scars on his psyche.
Ishii's completely off the wall style is present throughout the movie and the visuals are sure to appeal to his fans as they definitely deliver the weird looking goods. Plenty of primary colors, red in particular, bathe the performers and the sets while the camera lingers over some of the more perverse spectacles that unfold in front of its lens. Ultimately, some of it feels like a little 'too much 'at times in that the message gets lost in the medium, but thankfully enough of the story and the acting gets through the hyper stylized strangeness that we can make sense of it all and the experience ends up being a rather rewarding one.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Panik House presents the film in its original 1.85.1 widescreen aspect ratio enhanced for anamorphic sets and for the most part things look pretty good on this DVD. The source material shows its limitations in that there's some softness to certain scenes and some mild motion blurring here and there (some of which might be on purpose) but for the most part we're left with a pretty sharp and extremely colorful image that does a fine job bringing the material to life.
The Japanese language Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo track does a pretty nice job with the score and the dialogue and there are no complaints here. For the most part things sound good, there are no problems with hiss or distortion, and the music sounds nice and punchy. English and Spanish subtitles are included for the feature and menus only.
Rounding out the extra features are some basic production notes on the film, two nice poster and still galleries, biographies on the key cast and crew members, and trailers for the feature and a few other Panik House DVD releases. For those with DVD-Roms, pop this disc into your computer to check out a nifty little comic book related to the feature. Included inside the keepcase is a sticker that reproduces the cover art.
The Final Word:
Screwed isn't Ishii's best film but it's still worth checking out for the sheer weirdness of it all. Panik House does their usual strong job with the disc.