The Mystery of Rampo

This became a cause célèbre in 1994 when producer Okuyama objected to the work of director Rintaro Mayuzumi and remade it the way he wanted. The two versions were released side-by-side in Tokyo; the 1995 London Film Festival, predictably, showed only the producer's cut. Edogawa Ranpo ('Edgar Allan Poe') was the pen name of Hirai Taro (1894-1965), writer of erotic/fantastic mystery fiction; the wheeze behind this imaginary episode from his life is to trap him inside one of his own bizarre and enigmatic stories. Okuyama has cast and designed it expensively, and the animated prologue is quite cute. But it's basically piffle, founded on a lamentably dated idea of what images of Japan foreign suckers might pay to see.