A horrible waste of time. I'm all for non-linear narratives, but this made no sense and never paid off. Characters have beards or an eye patch in one scene, then not in the next. You can't tell which characters actually exist, or who they are to each other. There's no coherent visual style, or rhythm, or any logic whatsoever. The Butoh dancers are probably supposed to be "artsy" or intense, but they just come off as silly, capering about with great commitment and no discernible purpose.While there's some resemblance to the Dr. Moreau story, this movie is too goofy to be shocking, and too disorganized to ever build up any fear or potency.What you do get: a random, unintelligible story, bad special effect violence, and a fair number of bare tits. (That actually makes it sound better than it is.)

This infamous Japenese cult flick unfortunately doesn't live up to its lofty reputation. It has some worthy moments, but only a few in what is otherwise a painfully boring and poorly made affair. The confusing story involves a medical student searching for his origins based on the few memories he has from his childhood. He makes his way to the coast of the Japan Sea, where he discovers an obituary for a man who looks exactly like him. He then pretends to be the dead man resurrected, and eventually is brought to an island not far away where the dead man's father is purportedly conducting odd experiments on human beings. The entire story up to here is confusing, uninvolving, and honestly pretty stupid. Only when the protagonist arrives on the island with the titular malformed men does it contain a shred of interest. But only a shred. The mad scientist on the island, kind of the Japanese version of Dr. Moreau, is mutating human beings into freaks. These people, played by circus performers, are dressed in weird costumes and covered with icky makeup. Supposedly the film was meant to reflect the effects of an atomic bomb. I'm not really that sure that was meant, since I don't think any radiation poisoning resulted in a person turning silver. This seems to be where some of the film's fans find substance in the thing, but, really, that half-assed commentary isn't even close to as good as the half-assed commentary in the original Gojira, or, even more appropriate to this conversation, another Ishiro Honda film, Matango: Attack of the Mushroom People, which was made six years earlier than Horrors of Malformed Men. The malformed men are pretty cool, I must admit, but their appearance and participation in the film takes up around ten minutes of this 100 minute film, one tenth, by my estimation. I couldn't forgive the first half of the movie. And even moreso I can't forgive what comes after this, where the mad doctor tells his story in a prolonged, monochromatic flashback. I guess I should be thankful, because the stuff I couldn't understand about the plot earlier in the movie is explicated in such detail that I wanted to rip my hair out. But at least I finally got the plot. And worse, after the doctor has his ten minute flashback, another character has another ten minute flashback. The story is patently ridiculous, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It could have been fun, but it isn't. It's a crushing bore! It does end on a hilarious bit, but nothing could have saved this movie.

Postwar Japan gave birth to probably one of the most consistently weird dance forms, Butoh. It rather hard to describe except that the processions of anguished clay caked naked bodies and rag covered transvestites makes me think of a nuclear holocaust. Since Japan is the only country with any experience with the horrors of a nuclear holocaust, it isn't surprising.We open with a dazed man in the middle of a cage of naked crazy women in a mental institution. We soon learn that he's an inmate as well. He is haunted by an odd children's lullaby. That night a strange bald man tries to kill him but instead our hero kills the bald man and escapes. Our hero hears the unusual lullaby and finds a circus performer who seems to come from the same remote place on the coast. He makes his way to the coast and finds out that a rich man who looks exactly like him has just died. He digs up the body and switches clothing becoming the dead man mistakenly buried too soon. Our hero then attempts to discover the strange secrets of the dead man's family while trying to imitate the deceased.After watching this production I am very interested in why this film has been banned in Japan for so long. There are plenty of films that are WAY MORE DISTURBING, disgusting or horrifying from Japan, some made the same year! The most likely part is the second half of the film when the Butoh dancers are given plenty of screen time but much of it is mystifying to me rather then disturbing. The couple of torture scenes are rough but not worse then anything I've seen from any pinku film.Anyway the film is quite good for the first half and starts to fall apart during the second half. It seems the the director and his camera person really didn't know what to do with the Butoh dancers. We get a number of very striking Butoh scenarios, poorly filmed (compared to the excellent filming in the rest of the film), that go by with the main characters just gazing on in disbelief. No real connection to the plot.An interesting experiment.

It's funny that Ishii says he was not familiar with the Moreau storyline because this flick looks so much like a crazy adaptation for it. Not an intense feature but one that will serve you very memorable freaky and somewhat psychedelic moments that, out of the wild context, will remind you of all the Japanese contemporary horror everyone yells for (think Ring, Dark Water as much as video games like Siren and Project Zero...). Very poorly written plot, but who cares when they're served such crazy visions and a final I would place in my top 10 of mindblowing movie endings - but that's just me... That's a very hard to see movie, and well worth seeing if you get the chance.