The Warped Ones
Encyclopedia
is a 1960
Japanese
Sun Tribe film directed by Koreyoshi Kurahara
and starring Tamio Kawachi, Eiji Go, Yuko Chishiro and Noriko Matsumoto. It was produced and distributed by the Nikkatsu
Company. The story concerns the young hoodlum Akira, his friends, their transgressions and specifically their revenge on the couple that got him sent to jail, a reporter and his fiancée, by means of assault, vehicular and sexual. When the fiancée finds herself pregnant by Akira she enlists his help with her finance who has become distant since the attack.
The film was a return to a subset of the youth film genre that had been shut down at the behest of moral outrage several years earlier. Often compared by critics to Breathless (1960) and Rebel Without a Cause
(1955), it is a stylistic departure from studio norms, driven by its jazz score and employing filmic techniques described as being as energetic and frantic as its characters. It achieved success in Japan and was followed by Black Sun (1964), featuring many of the same cast, crew and characters, with the addition of acclaimed drummer Max Roach
to the soundtrack. Audubon Films released The Warped Ones in the United States in 1963 where it was marketed as a sexploitation film.
girlfriend Fumiko (Noriko Matsumoto) are arrested when they are spotted fleecing foreigners in a jazz club
by a reporter named Kashiwagi (Hiroyuki Nagato
). In jail, Akira meets Masaru (Eiji Go) and on their release they and Fumiko resume criminal activities. They spot Kashiwagi and his artist fiancée, Yuki (Yuko Chishiro), hit him with a stolen car and kidnap her. They take her to a remote beach where Akira rape
s her while Masaru and Fumiko fornicate in the ocean.
Soon after, the three rent an apartment with money earned from fencing the stolen car. Masaru and Fumiko commit to starting a family, while he joins a yakuza
gang, to the derision of Akira. Yuki tracks Akira down and informs him that she is pregnant. Kashiwagi has become distant and haughty and she pleads with Akira for help. Akira arranges for Fumiko to seduce Kashiwagi so that the couple might again be on equal terms. Masaru is killed by a rival yakuza. Fumiko discovers that she is pregnant but without Masaru's support she resolves to get an abortion
and resume her prostitution career. Akira and Fumiko meet Kashiwagi and Yuki by chance at an abortion clinic where Akira reveals that each woman was impregnated by the other man, to the amusement of the former couple and befuddlement of the latter.
Company made three popular Sun Tribe films in 1956, a genre based on a contemporary youth subculture
whose interests revolved around beach life, jazz music and their progressive attitudes towards sex. The films met with moral public outcries and a fourth production was shut down at the behest of Eirin
(The Motion Picture Code of Ethics Committee). However, the genre later experienced a resurgence which included The Warped Ones. The film marked director Koreyoshi Kurahara
first collaboration with screenwriter
Nobuo Yamada. They reused a many elements of Kurahara's earlier Sun Tribe film The Time of Youth (1959), including abortion, a near fatality via an opened gas cock and a criminal act near water, an explosion beside a stream in the former and the rape on the beach in the latter.
Nikkatsu
was promoting lead actor Tamio Kawachi as one of its Bad Boy Trio, along with Akira Kobayashi
and Tadao Sawamoto. Kurahara asked him to think of his character as a "hungry lion roaring at the sun." He turned in what writer Mark Schilling described as his most unusual, and one of his best, performances of the period. Supporting actress Noriko Matsumoto came to the film as a relative unknown. Hiroyuki Nagato
had starred in The Time of Youth. Eiji Go was the younger brother of future Diamond Line star Joe Shishido
. The film was completed on August 18, 1960.
's jazz score moves swiftly. Cinematographer
Yoshi Mamiya and editor
Akira Suzuki employed swish-pan
s, freeze frame
s and jump cut
s, alternating between carefully composed shots and seemingly recklessly hand-held camera work. The titular youths of the film too move violently and speak in grunts, screams, whistles and sound effects, Akira frequently greeting women with, "Wanna get laid?" or Masura's scat
, "At-tatatatatataaaaa!" They are portrayed as amoral, impulsive narcissists
and hedonists
, pickpocketing and stealing cars with equal nonchalance. The antihero, Akira, described as possessing the "face-rubbing mannerisms of [Marlon] Brando
and the tortured swagger of James Dean
," varies between the sadistic and the indifferent—save when in a jazz-induced fervor—and reaches extremes largely unseen in the contemporaneous cinema of the West. The film's subject matter is sensationalistic
and it contains much incident in its short run time. The overall style is matched to the characters' verve and the story's frantic pace.
While not portraying Akira sympathetically, the film does offer a socio-political
view on the origins and inevitability of such criminal types in society. The tenements in which the youths reside are depicted as inhospitable and sterile. Lacking education, proper role models and moral codes, critic Bryan Hartzheim posited, crime and base pleasures are their most open recourse. They seem aware of the injustices in their environments and rail against society at large. However, Akira is illustrated as being capable of innocent pleasure, particularly in one fleeting scene in which he and his black friend Gil (Chico Rolands), whom he views as a fellow outcast, frolic in the ocean.
Company on September 3, 1960. The film was successful in Japan, although not so much so that Tamio Kawachi was ever elevated to major star status and after his "Bad Boy" period he was mainly relegated to second lead and supporting parts. In July 1961, Arthur Davis' newly formed, American, foreign film distribution company Kanji Pictures announced it had acquired ten Nikkatsu films for North and South American markets and parts of Europe. The films included The Warped Ones, Shōhei Imamura
's Pigs and Battleships
(1961) and Kon Ichikawa
's The Burmese Harp (1956) and were to be distributed by Kanji or sold to other distribution companies. An English-dubbed
version of The Warped Ones was then released in the United States on December 18, 1963, by Radley Metzger
's sexploitation-centric Audubon Films, initially as the The Weird Lovemakers, then The Warped Ones became the more common title. It was marketed as an American film, and misleadingly implied to contain sexually explicit material, in order to appeal to a wider audience.
The original film resurfaced some four decades later at the 2005 Udine
Far East Film Festival in the No Borders, No Limits: Nikkatsu Action Cinema retrospective
. Mark Schilling curated the retrospective in order to expose international audiences to 1960s Nikkatsu Action films which, aside from the films of Seijun Suzuki
, remained predominately unseen outside of Japan. Schilling originally titled the film Season of Heat—a literal translation of the Japanese title—but it was retitled The Warped Ones for subsequent incarnations of the retrospective, which included runs in Austin and New York. It also appeared in a 12-film retrospective of Koreyoshi Kurahara
's Nikkatsu films at the 2008 Tokyo Filmex
International Film Festival in Japan. It was screened with English subtitles
.
Critics have most often compared the film to landmark youth films Breathless (also 1960)—released in France five months earlier—directed by Jean-Luc Godard
and Nicholas Ray
's Rebel Without a Cause
(1955), although, Bryan Hartzheim found it takes its youths more seriously and with less sympathy. He stated, "[The Warped Ones takes] a wrecking ball to what can be considered the indulgencies of the [youth film] genre, an exhibition of the horrors of uninhibited youth taken to its carnal extremes and matched by a visual accompaniment akin to the abstract and improvised style of a Miles Davis
score." Tim Lucas
of Video Watchdog
magazine called the film "an important rediscovery on many fronts... one of the great jazz films, and possibly the best illustration the cinema has ever given us of the jazz buff. It's the only film I've ever seen that makes jazz seem scarier than the darkest heavy metal, that makes jazz seem dangerous." For TokyoScope: The Japanese Cult Film Companion, Alvin Lu commended the score as "stunning" and Kawachi's performance as "ferocious, the very incarnation of the kind of social chaos that could be engendered by too much exposure to jazz, Coke, and hot dogs." The Boston Globe
's Wesley Morris
wrote, "[Koreyoshi] Kurahara takes the movie to extremes of behavior and style, merging the two until the form seems as violently unstable as the characters. He makes a wave that in Europe was called 'French' and 'new.' But with all due respect to Jean-Luc Godard, this is breathless - and more interesting, too." Morris further qualified that while Breathless may appeal to contemporary viewers academically, The Warped Ones retains a spontaneous, documentary feel. Schilling discerned the film, "Among [Kurahara's] boldest departures from studio convention."
Reviewer Peter Martin confided, "The Warped Ones baffled and mystified me, but I liked it very much." J.R. Jones, for The Reader's Guide to Arts & Entertainment, found the film "actually celebrates the values it's supposed to be condemning," but recommended it for its kineticism and action. TV Guide
and Allmovie did not recommended it, both gave it one star in their respective four and five star rating systems.
and Nobuo Yamada to write and direct a couple more original scripts, where Kurahara was primarily known for his adaptations of novels. This included the follow-up Black Sun (1964) which again featured Tamio Kawachi, who reprised his role from The Warped Ones, as did several of the other actors, and a lot of jazz music. In it, Kawachi's Akira shelters a black G.I., Gil, played by Chico Rolands, who goes A.W.O.L.
after killing a white man in a bar fight. The film explores the two men's friendship and race relations. It was also the first reversal on rashamen-themed films, post-war
, often American-Japanese co-productions focusing on friendships or romances between a Japanese and an American. Rashamen films were intended as to promote goodwill between the two nations but were generally less well received in Japan, seen as unrealistic or patronizing. Film historian Tadao Sato
described Black Sun as the first film of this sort where Japanese pity Americans instead of the reverse as Akira's preconceptions of black Americans are undone. Mark Schilling characterized Kawachi as bringing an "explosive energy" to the film and Roland a "piping screech of fear and desperation." Acclaimed American jazz musician Max Roach
contributed to the score.
Alvin Lu found The Warped Ones to be a prime example of the Sun Tribe genre and placed it among those films whose outlook made way for the Japanese pink film. In the film Tim Lucas
noted antecedents and a possible influence to "the most hellbent characters" in the films of acclaimed director Quentin Tarantino
's films and specifically to Stanley Kubrick
's iconic A Clockwork Orange
(1971). Lucas drew comparisons between The Warped Ones' main character Akira and A Clockwork Orange' s Alex DeLarge, including their respective obsessions with hard jazz and the music of Ludwig van Beethoven
, the former with a framed copy of Ornette Coleman
's album The Shape of Jazz to Come
next to his bed, the latter an engraving of Beethoven. Also, scenes of the former's verbal deconstructions by a group of art students versus the latter's by the government. Akira's attacks on abstract art
and DeLarge's on pop art
–lined homes. Finally, the character's regular hangouts, both painted with black walls, the former's adorned with portraits of jazz legends, the latter's with advertisements for "Vellocet" and "Drencrom"—the fictional drugs DeLarge and his gang use to invigorate themselves before their criminal acts. Lucas concluded, "Kubrick simply had to have seen it."
Two American music groups took their name from The Warped Ones alternate sexploitation title, The Weird Lovemakers. The now defunct Tucson
punk band The Weird Lovemakers assumed the name in 1994 and held it until their disbandment in 2000. The Oakland, California
–based electropop band The Lovemakers
planned to use the same name on their inception in 2002 but dropped the "Weird" upon their discovery of the former band having taken the name.
, VHS
version of the film is available from Something Weird Video
under the moniker The Weird Lovemakers. In 2007, a DVD-R
version was also made available. A DVD for The Warped Ones will be released by the Criterion Collection on August 23, 2011 as part of their "The Warped World of Koreyoshi Kurahara" compilation.
Think! Records reissued the soundtrack on Compact Disc
as a part of its Cine Jazz series, which featured 1960s Nikkatsu Action film scores. It is part of a two disc set, the first contains music from Toshirō Mayuzumi
's score for Black Sun (1964) and the second from his score for The Warped Ones. The first disc features American jazz musicians Max Roach
on drums, Clifford Jordan
on tenor saxophone, Ronnie Mathews
on piano, Eddie Kahn on bass and vocals by Abbey Lincoln
. The second disc features the Nikkatsu Jazz Group
1960 in film
The year 1960 in film involved some significant events, with Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho the top-grossing release in the U.S.-Events:* April 20 - for the first time since coming home from military service in Germany, Elvis Presley returns to Hollywood, California to film G.I...
Japanese
Cinema of Japan
The has a history that spans more than 100 years. Japan has one of the oldest and largest film industries in the world – as of 2009 the fourth largest by number of feature films produced. Movies have been produced in Japan since 1897, when the first foreign cameramen arrived...
Sun Tribe film directed by Koreyoshi Kurahara
Koreyoshi Kurahara
was a Japanese screenwriter and director. He is perhaps best known for directing Antarctica , which won several awards and was entered into the 34th Berlin International Film Festival...
and starring Tamio Kawachi, Eiji Go, Yuko Chishiro and Noriko Matsumoto. It was produced and distributed by the Nikkatsu
Nikkatsu
is a Japanese entertainment company well known for its film and television productions. It is Japan's oldest major movie studio. The name Nikkatsu is an abbreviation of Nippon Katsudō Shashin, literally "Japan Cinematograph Company".-History:...
Company. The story concerns the young hoodlum Akira, his friends, their transgressions and specifically their revenge on the couple that got him sent to jail, a reporter and his fiancée, by means of assault, vehicular and sexual. When the fiancée finds herself pregnant by Akira she enlists his help with her finance who has become distant since the attack.
The film was a return to a subset of the youth film genre that had been shut down at the behest of moral outrage several years earlier. Often compared by critics to Breathless (1960) and Rebel Without a Cause
Rebel Without a Cause
Rebel Without a Cause is a 1955 American drama film about emotionally confused suburban, middle-class teenagers. Directed by Nicholas Ray, it offered both social commentary and an alternative to previous films depicting delinquents in urban slum environments...
(1955), it is a stylistic departure from studio norms, driven by its jazz score and employing filmic techniques described as being as energetic and frantic as its characters. It achieved success in Japan and was followed by Black Sun (1964), featuring many of the same cast, crew and characters, with the addition of acclaimed drummer Max Roach
Max Roach
Maxwell Lemuel "Max" Roach was an American jazz percussionist, drummer, and composer.A pioneer of bebop, Roach went on to work in many other styles of music, and is generally considered alongside the most important drummers in history...
to the soundtrack. Audubon Films released The Warped Ones in the United States in 1963 where it was marketed as a sexploitation film.
Synopsis
Criminal and jazz aficionado Akira (Tamio Kawachi) and his prostituteProstitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
girlfriend Fumiko (Noriko Matsumoto) are arrested when they are spotted fleecing foreigners in a jazz club
Jazz club
A jazz club is a venue where the primary entertainment is the performance of live jazz music. Jazz clubs have been in large rooms in the eras of Orchestral jazz and big band jazz and when its popularity as a dance music was common...
by a reporter named Kashiwagi (Hiroyuki Nagato
Hiroyuki Nagato
was a Japanese actor.Nagato was born in Kyoto. He starred in Season of the Sun, Endless Desire, My Second Brother, Stolen Desire, and Sukeban Deka, and Yo-Yo Girl Cop. He died in Tokyo on May 21, 2011....
). In jail, Akira meets Masaru (Eiji Go) and on their release they and Fumiko resume criminal activities. They spot Kashiwagi and his artist fiancée, Yuki (Yuko Chishiro), hit him with a stolen car and kidnap her. They take her to a remote beach where Akira rape
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
s her while Masaru and Fumiko fornicate in the ocean.
Soon after, the three rent an apartment with money earned from fencing the stolen car. Masaru and Fumiko commit to starting a family, while he joins a yakuza
Yakuza
, also known as , are members of traditional organized crime syndicates in Japan. The Japanese police, and media by request of the police, call them bōryokudan , literally "violence group", while the yakuza call themselves "ninkyō dantai" , "chivalrous organizations". The yakuza are notoriously...
gang, to the derision of Akira. Yuki tracks Akira down and informs him that she is pregnant. Kashiwagi has become distant and haughty and she pleads with Akira for help. Akira arranges for Fumiko to seduce Kashiwagi so that the couple might again be on equal terms. Masaru is killed by a rival yakuza. Fumiko discovers that she is pregnant but without Masaru's support she resolves to get an abortion
Abortion
Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
and resume her prostitution career. Akira and Fumiko meet Kashiwagi and Yuki by chance at an abortion clinic where Akira reveals that each woman was impregnated by the other man, to the amusement of the former couple and befuddlement of the latter.
Production
The NikkatsuNikkatsu
is a Japanese entertainment company well known for its film and television productions. It is Japan's oldest major movie studio. The name Nikkatsu is an abbreviation of Nippon Katsudō Shashin, literally "Japan Cinematograph Company".-History:...
Company made three popular Sun Tribe films in 1956, a genre based on a contemporary youth subculture
Youth subculture
A youth subculture is a youth-based subculture with distinct styles, behaviors, and interests. Youth subcultures offer participants an identity outside of that ascribed by social institutions such as family, work, home and school...
whose interests revolved around beach life, jazz music and their progressive attitudes towards sex. The films met with moral public outcries and a fourth production was shut down at the behest of Eirin
Eirin
is the abbreviated name for , Japan's movie regulator. Eirin was established on the model of the American Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America's Production Code Administration in June, 1949, on the instructions of the US occupation force...
(The Motion Picture Code of Ethics Committee). However, the genre later experienced a resurgence which included The Warped Ones. The film marked director Koreyoshi Kurahara
Koreyoshi Kurahara
was a Japanese screenwriter and director. He is perhaps best known for directing Antarctica , which won several awards and was entered into the 34th Berlin International Film Festival...
first collaboration with screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
Nobuo Yamada. They reused a many elements of Kurahara's earlier Sun Tribe film The Time of Youth (1959), including abortion, a near fatality via an opened gas cock and a criminal act near water, an explosion beside a stream in the former and the rape on the beach in the latter.
Nikkatsu
Nikkatsu
is a Japanese entertainment company well known for its film and television productions. It is Japan's oldest major movie studio. The name Nikkatsu is an abbreviation of Nippon Katsudō Shashin, literally "Japan Cinematograph Company".-History:...
was promoting lead actor Tamio Kawachi as one of its Bad Boy Trio, along with Akira Kobayashi
Akira Kobayashi
is a Japanese actor. His nickname is .- Biography :He successfully became an actor in the Nikkatsu Corporation. He attended Meiji University but left before graduating. Kobayashi made his debut in 1959 in the film Nangoku Tosa o Ato ni Shite . He also starred in the TV series "Wataridori" and...
and Tadao Sawamoto. Kurahara asked him to think of his character as a "hungry lion roaring at the sun." He turned in what writer Mark Schilling described as his most unusual, and one of his best, performances of the period. Supporting actress Noriko Matsumoto came to the film as a relative unknown. Hiroyuki Nagato
Hiroyuki Nagato
was a Japanese actor.Nagato was born in Kyoto. He starred in Season of the Sun, Endless Desire, My Second Brother, Stolen Desire, and Sukeban Deka, and Yo-Yo Girl Cop. He died in Tokyo on May 21, 2011....
had starred in The Time of Youth. Eiji Go was the younger brother of future Diamond Line star Joe Shishido
Joe Shishido
is a Japanese actor most recognizable for his intense, eccentric yakuza film roles and his artificially enlarged cheekbones. He has appeared in some 300 films but is best known in the West for his performance in the cult film Branded to Kill...
. The film was completed on August 18, 1960.
Style
As writer Mark Schilling put it, "the soundtrack drives the action," and composer Toshirō MayuzumiToshiro Mayuzumi
Toshiro Mayuzumi was a Japanese composer.-Biography:...
's jazz score moves swiftly. Cinematographer
Cinematographer
A cinematographer is one photographing with a motion picture camera . The title is generally equivalent to director of photography , used to designate a chief over the camera and lighting crews working on a film, responsible for achieving artistic and technical decisions related to the image...
Yoshi Mamiya and editor
Editing
Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...
Akira Suzuki employed swish-pan
Panning (camera)
In photography, panning refers to the horizontal movement or rotation of a still or video camera, or the scanning of a subject horizontally on video or a display device...
s, freeze frame
Freeze frame shot
A freeze frame shot is used when one shot is printed in a single frame several times, in order to make an interesting illusion of a still photograph....
s and jump cut
Jump cut
A jump cut is a cut in film editing and vloging in which two sequential shots of the same subject are taken from camera positions that vary only slightly. This type of edit causes the subject of the shots to appear to "jump" position in a discontinuous way...
s, alternating between carefully composed shots and seemingly recklessly hand-held camera work. The titular youths of the film too move violently and speak in grunts, screams, whistles and sound effects, Akira frequently greeting women with, "Wanna get laid?" or Masura's scat
Scat singing
In vocal jazz, scat singing is vocal improvisation with wordless vocables, nonsense syllables or without words at all. Scat singing gives singers the ability to sing improvised melodies and rhythms, to create the equivalent of an instrumental solo using their voice.- Structure and syllable choice...
, "At-tatatatatataaaaa!" They are portrayed as amoral, impulsive narcissists
Narcissism
Narcissism is a term with a wide range of meanings, depending on whether it is used to describe a central concept of psychoanalytic theory, a mental illness, a social or cultural problem, or simply a personality trait...
and hedonists
Hedonism
Hedonism is a school of thought which argues that pleasure is the only intrinsic good. In very simple terms, a hedonist strives to maximize net pleasure .-Etymology:The name derives from the Greek word for "delight" ....
, pickpocketing and stealing cars with equal nonchalance. The antihero, Akira, described as possessing the "face-rubbing mannerisms of [Marlon] Brando
Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando, Jr. was an American movie star and political activist. "Unchallenged as the most important actor in modern American Cinema" according to the St...
and the tortured swagger of James Dean
James Dean
James Byron Dean was an American film actor. He is a cultural icon, best embodied in the title of his most celebrated film, Rebel Without a Cause , in which he starred as troubled Los Angeles teenager Jim Stark...
," varies between the sadistic and the indifferent—save when in a jazz-induced fervor—and reaches extremes largely unseen in the contemporaneous cinema of the West. The film's subject matter is sensationalistic
Sensationalism
Sensationalism is a type of editorial bias in mass media in which events and topics in news stories and pieces are over-hyped to increase viewership or readership numbers...
and it contains much incident in its short run time. The overall style is matched to the characters' verve and the story's frantic pace.
While not portraying Akira sympathetically, the film does offer a socio-political
Political sociology
Contemporary political sociology involves much more than the study of the relations between state and society . Where a typical research question in political sociology might have been: "Why do so few American citizens choose to vote?" or even, "What difference does it make if women get elected?" ...
view on the origins and inevitability of such criminal types in society. The tenements in which the youths reside are depicted as inhospitable and sterile. Lacking education, proper role models and moral codes, critic Bryan Hartzheim posited, crime and base pleasures are their most open recourse. They seem aware of the injustices in their environments and rail against society at large. However, Akira is illustrated as being capable of innocent pleasure, particularly in one fleeting scene in which he and his black friend Gil (Chico Rolands), whom he views as a fellow outcast, frolic in the ocean.
Reception
The Warped Ones was originally released in Japan by the NikkatsuNikkatsu
is a Japanese entertainment company well known for its film and television productions. It is Japan's oldest major movie studio. The name Nikkatsu is an abbreviation of Nippon Katsudō Shashin, literally "Japan Cinematograph Company".-History:...
Company on September 3, 1960. The film was successful in Japan, although not so much so that Tamio Kawachi was ever elevated to major star status and after his "Bad Boy" period he was mainly relegated to second lead and supporting parts. In July 1961, Arthur Davis' newly formed, American, foreign film distribution company Kanji Pictures announced it had acquired ten Nikkatsu films for North and South American markets and parts of Europe. The films included The Warped Ones, Shōhei Imamura
Shohei Imamura
was a Japanese film director. Imamura was the first Japanese director to win two Palme d'Or awards.His eldest son Daisuke Tengan is also a script writer and film director, and worked on the screenplays to Imamura's filmsThe Eel , Dr...
's Pigs and Battleships
Pigs and Battleships
is a 1961 Japanese film by director Shohei Imamura.- Plot :The film depicts the mutually exploitative relationship that exists between the U.S. military and the lower elements of Japanese society at Yokosuka....
(1961) and Kon Ichikawa
Kon Ichikawa
was a Japanese film director.-Early life and career:Ichikawa was born in Ise, Mie Prefecture. In the 1930s Ichikawa attended a technical school in Osaka. Upon graduation, in 1933, he found a job with a local rental film studio, J.O. Studio, in their animation department...
's The Burmese Harp (1956) and were to be distributed by Kanji or sold to other distribution companies. An English-dubbed
Dubbing (filmmaking)
Dubbing is the post-production process of recording and replacing voices on a motion picture or television soundtrack subsequent to the original shooting. The term most commonly refers to the substitution of the voices of the actors shown on the screen by those of different performers, who may be...
version of The Warped Ones was then released in the United States on December 18, 1963, by Radley Metzger
Radley Metzger
Radley Metzger is an American filmmaker and distributor. He is also credited under the pseudonym Henry Paris, a name he adopted in the 1970s when he began to direct hardcore pornography....
's sexploitation-centric Audubon Films, initially as the The Weird Lovemakers, then The Warped Ones became the more common title. It was marketed as an American film, and misleadingly implied to contain sexually explicit material, in order to appeal to a wider audience.
The original film resurfaced some four decades later at the 2005 Udine
Udine
Udine is a city and comune in northeastern Italy, in the middle of Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, between the Adriatic sea and the Alps , less than 40 km from the Slovenian border. Its population was 99,439 in 2009, and that of its urban area was 175,000.- History :Udine is the historical...
Far East Film Festival in the No Borders, No Limits: Nikkatsu Action Cinema retrospective
Retrospective
Retrospective generally means to take a look back at events that already have taken place. For example, the term is used in medicine, describing a look back at a patient's medical history or lifestyle.-Music:...
. Mark Schilling curated the retrospective in order to expose international audiences to 1960s Nikkatsu Action films which, aside from the films of Seijun Suzuki
Seijun Suzuki
, born Seitaro Suzuki on May 24, 1923, is a Japanese filmmaker, actor, and screenwriter. His films are renowned by film enthusiasts worldwide for their jarring visual style, irreverent humour, nihilistic cool and entertainment-over-logic sensibility...
, remained predominately unseen outside of Japan. Schilling originally titled the film Season of Heat—a literal translation of the Japanese title—but it was retitled The Warped Ones for subsequent incarnations of the retrospective, which included runs in Austin and New York. It also appeared in a 12-film retrospective of Koreyoshi Kurahara
Koreyoshi Kurahara
was a Japanese screenwriter and director. He is perhaps best known for directing Antarctica , which won several awards and was entered into the 34th Berlin International Film Festival...
's Nikkatsu films at the 2008 Tokyo Filmex
Tokyo Filmex
Tokyo Filmex is an annual film festival established in 2000. This film festival was launched by Office Kitano, which is Takeshi Kitano's film company.For now, Office Kitano remains as one of the main partners for Tokyo Filmex....
International Film Festival in Japan. It was screened with English subtitles
Subtitle (captioning)
Subtitles are textual versions of the dialog in films and television programs, usually displayed at the bottom of the screen. They can either be a form of written translation of a dialog in a foreign language, or a written rendering of the dialog in the same language, with or without added...
.
Critics have most often compared the film to landmark youth films Breathless (also 1960)—released in France five months earlier—directed by Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
and Nicholas Ray
Nicholas Ray
Nicholas Ray was an American film director best known for the movie Rebel Without a Cause....
's Rebel Without a Cause
Rebel Without a Cause
Rebel Without a Cause is a 1955 American drama film about emotionally confused suburban, middle-class teenagers. Directed by Nicholas Ray, it offered both social commentary and an alternative to previous films depicting delinquents in urban slum environments...
(1955), although, Bryan Hartzheim found it takes its youths more seriously and with less sympathy. He stated, "[The Warped Ones takes] a wrecking ball to what can be considered the indulgencies of the [youth film] genre, an exhibition of the horrors of uninhibited youth taken to its carnal extremes and matched by a visual accompaniment akin to the abstract and improvised style of a Miles Davis
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz,...
score." Tim Lucas
Tim Lucas
Tim Lucas is a film critic, biographer, novelist, screenwriter, blogger, and publisher/editor of the video review magazine Video Watchdog.-Biography and early career:...
of Video Watchdog
Video Watchdog
Video Watchdog is a bimonthly, digest size film magazine started in 1990 by publisher/editor Tim Lucas and his wife, art director and co-publisher Donna Lucas....
magazine called the film "an important rediscovery on many fronts... one of the great jazz films, and possibly the best illustration the cinema has ever given us of the jazz buff. It's the only film I've ever seen that makes jazz seem scarier than the darkest heavy metal, that makes jazz seem dangerous." For TokyoScope: The Japanese Cult Film Companion, Alvin Lu commended the score as "stunning" and Kawachi's performance as "ferocious, the very incarnation of the kind of social chaos that could be engendered by too much exposure to jazz, Coke, and hot dogs." The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe is an American daily newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has been owned by The New York Times Company since 1993...
's Wesley Morris
Wesley Morris
Wesley Morris is a film critic at The Boston Globe where he reviews films alongside Ty Burr. Morris and Burr also make regular appearances on NECN to discuss the latest films and do the weekly Take Two film review video series on Boston.com...
wrote, "[Koreyoshi] Kurahara takes the movie to extremes of behavior and style, merging the two until the form seems as violently unstable as the characters. He makes a wave that in Europe was called 'French' and 'new.' But with all due respect to Jean-Luc Godard, this is breathless - and more interesting, too." Morris further qualified that while Breathless may appeal to contemporary viewers academically, The Warped Ones retains a spontaneous, documentary feel. Schilling discerned the film, "Among [Kurahara's] boldest departures from studio convention."
Reviewer Peter Martin confided, "The Warped Ones baffled and mystified me, but I liked it very much." J.R. Jones, for The Reader's Guide to Arts & Entertainment, found the film "actually celebrates the values it's supposed to be condemning," but recommended it for its kineticism and action. TV Guide
TV Guide
TV Guide is a weekly American magazine with listings of TV shows.In addition to TV listings, the publication features television-related news, celebrity interviews, gossip and film reviews and crossword puzzles...
and Allmovie did not recommended it, both gave it one star in their respective four and five star rating systems.
Legacy
The success of the film lead Koreyoshi KuraharaKoreyoshi Kurahara
was a Japanese screenwriter and director. He is perhaps best known for directing Antarctica , which won several awards and was entered into the 34th Berlin International Film Festival...
and Nobuo Yamada to write and direct a couple more original scripts, where Kurahara was primarily known for his adaptations of novels. This included the follow-up Black Sun (1964) which again featured Tamio Kawachi, who reprised his role from The Warped Ones, as did several of the other actors, and a lot of jazz music. In it, Kawachi's Akira shelters a black G.I., Gil, played by Chico Rolands, who goes A.W.O.L.
Desertion
In military terminology, desertion is the abandonment of a "duty" or post without permission and is done with the intention of not returning...
after killing a white man in a bar fight. The film explores the two men's friendship and race relations. It was also the first reversal on rashamen-themed films, post-war
Post-war
A post-war period or postwar period is the interval immediately following the ending of a war and enduring as long as war does not resume. A post-war period can become an interwar period or interbellum when a war between the same parties resumes at a later date...
, often American-Japanese co-productions focusing on friendships or romances between a Japanese and an American. Rashamen films were intended as to promote goodwill between the two nations but were generally less well received in Japan, seen as unrealistic or patronizing. Film historian Tadao Sato
Tadao Sato
is a prominent Japanese film critic and film theorist. Satō has published more than 30 books on film, and is one of the foremost scholars and historians addressing Japanese film, though little of his work has been translated for publication abroad....
described Black Sun as the first film of this sort where Japanese pity Americans instead of the reverse as Akira's preconceptions of black Americans are undone. Mark Schilling characterized Kawachi as bringing an "explosive energy" to the film and Roland a "piping screech of fear and desperation." Acclaimed American jazz musician Max Roach
Max Roach
Maxwell Lemuel "Max" Roach was an American jazz percussionist, drummer, and composer.A pioneer of bebop, Roach went on to work in many other styles of music, and is generally considered alongside the most important drummers in history...
contributed to the score.
Alvin Lu found The Warped Ones to be a prime example of the Sun Tribe genre and placed it among those films whose outlook made way for the Japanese pink film. In the film Tim Lucas
Tim Lucas
Tim Lucas is a film critic, biographer, novelist, screenwriter, blogger, and publisher/editor of the video review magazine Video Watchdog.-Biography and early career:...
noted antecedents and a possible influence to "the most hellbent characters" in the films of acclaimed director Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and actor. In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with films employing nonlinear storylines and the aestheticization of violence...
's films and specifically to Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...
's iconic A Clockwork Orange
A Clockwork Orange (film)
A Clockwork Orange is a 1971 film adaptation of Anthony Burgess's 1962 novel of the same name. It was written, directed and produced by Stanley Kubrick...
(1971). Lucas drew comparisons between The Warped Ones
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
, the former with a framed copy of Ornette Coleman
Ornette Coleman
Ornette Coleman is an American saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter and composer. He was one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s....
's album The Shape of Jazz to Come
The Shape of Jazz to Come
The Shape of Jazz to Come is an influential album by Ornette Coleman. It was his debut album for Atlantic Records who released it in late 1959....
next to his bed, the latter an engraving of Beethoven. Also, scenes of the former's verbal deconstructions by a group of art students versus the latter's by the government. Akira's attacks on abstract art
Abstract art
Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an...
and DeLarge's on pop art
Pop art
Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...
–lined homes. Finally, the character's regular hangouts, both painted with black walls, the former's adorned with portraits of jazz legends, the latter's with advertisements for "Vellocet" and "Drencrom"—the fictional drugs DeLarge and his gang use to invigorate themselves before their criminal acts. Lucas concluded, "Kubrick simply had to have seen it."
Two American music groups took their name from The Warped Ones alternate sexploitation title, The Weird Lovemakers. The now defunct Tucson
Tucson, Arizona
Tucson is a city in and the county seat of Pima County, Arizona, United States. The city is located 118 miles southeast of Phoenix and 60 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border. The 2010 United States Census puts the city's population at 520,116 with a metropolitan area population at 1,020,200...
punk band The Weird Lovemakers assumed the name in 1994 and held it until their disbandment in 2000. The Oakland, California
Oakland, California
Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...
–based electropop band The Lovemakers
The Lovemakers
The Lovemakers were an electropop/New Wave band from Oakland, California. The band was formed in the spring of 2002 by Scott Blonde and Lisa Light who are the two core members. Light and Blonde met in 2002 via Blonde's manager, who Light was dating at the time...
planned to use the same name on their inception in 2002 but dropped the "Weird" upon their discovery of the former band having taken the name.
Home video
In North America, an abridged, dubbedDubbing (filmmaking)
Dubbing is the post-production process of recording and replacing voices on a motion picture or television soundtrack subsequent to the original shooting. The term most commonly refers to the substitution of the voices of the actors shown on the screen by those of different performers, who may be...
, VHS
VHS
The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
version of the film is available from Something Weird Video
Something Weird Video
Something Weird Video is an American publisher of video tapes and DVDs, based in Seattle, Washington. They specialize in exploitation film, particularly the works of Harry Novak, Doris Wishman, David F. Friedman, and Herschell Gordon Lewis. SWV videos are available on demand to Comcast subscribers...
under the moniker The Weird Lovemakers. In 2007, a DVD-R
DVD-R
DVD-R is a DVD recordable format. A DVD-R typically has a storage capacity of 4.71 GB. Pioneer has also developed an 8.5 GB dual layer version, DVD-R DL, which appeared on the market in 2005....
version was also made available. A DVD for The Warped Ones will be released by the Criterion Collection on August 23, 2011 as part of their "The Warped World of Koreyoshi Kurahara" compilation.
Soundtrack
On February 23, 2007, the Japanese labelRecord label
In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...
Think! Records reissued the soundtrack on Compact Disc
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
as a part of its Cine Jazz series, which featured 1960s Nikkatsu Action film scores. It is part of a two disc set, the first contains music from Toshirō Mayuzumi
Toshiro Mayuzumi
Toshiro Mayuzumi was a Japanese composer.-Biography:...
's score for Black Sun (1964) and the second from his score for The Warped Ones. The first disc features American jazz musicians Max Roach
Max Roach
Maxwell Lemuel "Max" Roach was an American jazz percussionist, drummer, and composer.A pioneer of bebop, Roach went on to work in many other styles of music, and is generally considered alongside the most important drummers in history...
on drums, Clifford Jordan
Clifford Jordan
Clifford Laconia Jordan was a jazz saxophone player. While in Chicago, he performed with Max Roach, Sonny Stitt, and some rhythm and blues groups. He moved to New York City in 1957, after which he recorded three albums for Blue Note. He also recorded with Horace Silver, J.J. Johnson, Kenny...
on tenor saxophone, Ronnie Mathews
Ronnie Mathews
Ronnie Mathews was a jazz pianist primarily known for his work with other musicians, including Max Roach from 1963 to 1968 and Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. He acted as lead in recording from 1963 and 1978 - 1979...
on piano, Eddie Kahn on bass and vocals by Abbey Lincoln
Abbey Lincoln
Anna Marie Wooldridge , better known by her stage name Abbey Lincoln, was a jazz vocalist, songwriter, and actress. Lincoln was unusual in that she wrote and performed her own compositions, expanding the expectations of jazz audiences.-Biography:Born in Chicago, Illinois, she was one of many...
. The second disc features the Nikkatsu Jazz Group
Track listing
| | Black Sun | | The Warped Ones | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| # | | Title | Length | | # | | Title | Length | | # | | Title | Length |
| 1. | "Scene A" | 5:04 | 1. | "Scene 1" | 2:02 | 11. | "Scene 11" | 1:42 |
| 2. | "Scene A2" | 4:52 | 2. | "Scene 2" | 2:05 | 12. | "Scene 12" | 0:47 |
| 3. | "Scene B" | 5:27 | 3. | "Scene 3" | 1:32 | 13. | "Scene 13" | 1:30 |
| 4. | "Scene C" | 7:02 | 4. | "Scene 4" | 2:21 | 14. | "Scene 14" | 4:25 |
| 5. | "Scene D" | 2:30 | 5. | "Scene 5" | 0:44 | 15. | "Scene 15–1" | 0:21 |
| 6. | "Scene E2" | 10:36 | 6. | "Scene 6" | 0:56 | 16. | "Scene 15–2" | 0:36 |
| 7. | "Scene E3" | 8:28 | 7. | "Scene 7" | 3:54 | 17. | "Scene 16" | 0:40 |
| 8. | "Scene F2" | 4:55 | 8. | "Scene 8" | 1:33 | |||
| 9. | "Scene G" | 2:53 | 9. | "Scene 9" | 0:50 | |||
| 10. | "Scene H" | 2:15 | 10. | "Scene 10" | 0:21 | |||
External links
- U.S. release trailer at Something Weird VideoSomething Weird VideoSomething Weird Video is an American publisher of video tapes and DVDs, based in Seattle, Washington. They specialize in exploitation film, particularly the works of Harry Novak, Doris Wishman, David F. Friedman, and Herschell Gordon Lewis. SWV videos are available on demand to Comcast subscribers...
- The Warped Ones at the Japanese Movie DatabaseJapanese Movie DatabaseThe , commonly referred to as JMDB, is an online database of information about Japanese movies, actors, and production crew personnel. It is similar to the Internet Movie Database, but lists only those films originally released in Japan. The site was started in 1997, and contains movies from Meiji...