With an interest in both extreme Japanese horror and the theme of snuff films in general, I simply had to see Muzan-e, which by all accounts was pretty messed up. As I expected, I found myself quite sickened by this film, although surprisingly it wasn't the brutal violence that upset me the most, but rather the taboo-busting and rather stomach-churning scenes that centred on the bizarre world of fetish porn, all of which only go to reaffirm my idea of Japan as a Mecca for the truly twisted!Muzan-e seems fairly routine at first: shot in faux documentary form, it sees a female reporter investigating the disappearance of an AV starlet famed for her 'specialist' work. After unearthing some background information on the missing girl and conducting several interviews with those who worked with her (during which we snippets of her 'performing'), the reporter gets her hands on a video tape that purportedly shows the woman being tortured and killed on-camera by two brothers, fans who abduct their idol only to decide that they have the wrong person. Although it's strong stuff, after what had gone before, I wan't too phased by the realism of the tape or the gore effects, which is par for the course for this kind of thing.However, in an unexpected twist (that I have to admit doesn't completely make sense to me), the reporter eventually becomes a victim of the brothers herself, but while she too is subjected to torture and mutilation, it is revealed that… well, I won't spoil it for you, but don't be surprised if you are left a tad confused by what you have seen. Overall, though, this is a bold, bloody and disturbing film and a must-see for fans of the rough stuff.

Muzan e, stated as a sickie from Japan, only available on terrible downloads and terrible copies. But let me tell you, it had a proper release on DVD in 2010 but is already OOP, it was maybe available for a few days. If you know your way you could catch a copy, otherwise you will be stuck forever with a bad copy. Luckily I found me a digital remaster on DVD, and have seen the downloads I can say, what an improvement. So far so good. But the flick itself isn't that sick as told. The mystery about this flick is solved now that it is available on DVD with interviews with the director. Still, it's a good story and I guess that Japanese people do have a n obsession with tampons because here we go again just like in Tampon Tango. But it's the other way, the tampon, a used one, is being teared out of a vagina and is being put into the girls mouth. Than a guy goes sucking out the blood out of her, well, you can guess it. One reporter goes searching what is going on in the world of porn, but get a VHS with some snuff on it, she wants to know if it's real and yes, she finds out but it goes wrong from there. There is a lot of blah blah in it and sadly for most people it won't have subs, on the other hand, private parts are blurred and even some faces are blurred. For me it's okay to see but I wouldn't classify it in the top ten of sickest flicks ever. Still, glad I have it in my possession as official remastered release.

The Camera-work on the film is complete crap, it looks like it was filmed on a second hand camera brought from a car boot sale in Tokyo, and edited on an old junk yard hard drive. The actors look like they've been pulled off the street or are out of work porn stars, The special FX consist of a fake knife, and some ketchup. Its filmed in some kind of basement, with lousy shots of a city street. In all, it serves only as inspiration to make your own low budget film, you could pick up some techniques, other than that, don't bother watching it.

Going into Muzan E I was well aware that it's a nasty flick and that my copy had no subtitles. Well both are incredibly true. It's actually one of the most disturbing movies I've ever seen. During the first 15 minutes of so I was dying for subtitles. Nothing of great importance was happening visually, but there was a soft-spoken reporter talking pretty much nonstop. It definitely would have been nice to hear what she was saying. Anyways, it's not a difficult movie to follow and the story goes something like this: Female reporter investigating really nasty sex tapes. She eventually gets her hands on a big scoop, meaning a really, really nasty tape. Reporter and crew decide to delve deeper into the scene and nasty things follow. I was actually pleasantly surprised where they went with this film.Muzan E is a sick film, that only people with weird tastes should watch. I'd describe the movie as pretty gory, but the weird thing is almost all the shots are blurred so you can't see much detail....thinking back on this it was probably a good thing. Anyways, the movie starts off slow, but steadily builds up speed and your attention. If you're looking for a f'ed up film, just check out Muzan E. 7.5 outta 10