Tales Of Terror From Tokyo… and all over Japan – The Movie
(Anthology Feature)
Picture: C
Sound: C+ Extras: C- Shorts: C
We have had the chance to look at two anthology features
form Japan and were happy with both. Curse,
Death & Spirit offered early TV work from writer/director Hideo Nakata,
while Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams is a very underrated work from the late
master. Tales Of Terror From Tokyo…
and all over Japan – The Movie does not fare as well, offering some
interesting but never the payoff the better works in the mystery/supernatural
anthology genre do. The eight tales
here are:
1) Night
Watchman
2) Wisps Of
Smoke
3) Gloves
4) The
Weight
5) Full-Length
Mirror
6) Line Of
Sight
7) The
Promise
8) Hisao
The fifth installment is the shortest and most interesting,
with the best payoff, but would have worked even better with more
development. Some of the shorts have
almost the same payoff, which is a particularly bad thing. I enjoyed the ambition and ideas in some of
the shorts, but others just never add up.
It is an interesting mix of good and bad, but what does not work usually
outdoes what does.
The shorts are of various visual quality and shot in
various formats, but all are presented here in anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1
and all are on the soft side. Some are
worse than others, while color quality also varies throughout. The Japanese Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo also
varies in quality throughout, but there are no real major surrounds from any of
the shorts. The only extras are
trailers for this and four other Tokyo Shock DVD releases.
- Nicholas Sheffo
