Black Lizard

Black Lizard 1
Black Lizard

Screening at L’Étrange Festival, Paris (France) on 13 September 2017
Format: Cinema
Director: Kinji Fukasaku
Writers: Masahige Narusawa, Yukio Mishima
Based on the story by: Edogawa Rampo
Cast: Akihiro Maruyama, Isao Kimura, Kikko Matsuoka, Junya Usami
Original tile: Kuro tokage
Japan 1968
86 mins

The delirious adventures of a queer criminal as seen by Yukio Mishima and Kinji Fukasaku.

Footsteps echo in the dark. A hand knocks on a door. A flap is lifted, a pair of eyes peeks out, the door opens. Footsteps lead down a corridor decorated with fluorescent drawings. Another door flings open and the psychedelic lights and music of a nightclub explode onto the screen, frenzied dancers wearing little aside from body paint gyrate to a wild groove while men gleefully grab handfuls of sequined breasts, the walls around them decorated with Aubrey Beardsley’s illustrations for Oscar Wilde’s Salome. In such a heady atmosphere of decadence and loose abandon, it does not seem unnatural that the mistress of the place, a femme fatale in slinky black dress and diamonds, should be played by a cross-dressing male actor (the celebrated Japanese transvestite Akihiro Miwa, here credited as Akihiro Maruyama). Mrs Midorigawa, aka the famous criminal Black Lizard, approaches Detective Akechi, sitting alone at the bar, who came ‘by chance’ to the secret club, and their encounter is the start of a sexually charged, fatal face-off where romantic tension is played out as the mind games of two people on opposing sides of the law.

Continue reading Black Lizard