Portal:Japan/Selected article/25
The Warped Ones (aka Season of Heat, Wild Love-Makers and The Weird Lovemakers) 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. (Full article...)