It is so damn rare that a Shinya Tsukamoto movie is released in Australia, that the very existence of Nightmare Detective in this writers eyes is cause for celebration. The reason unfortunately is due to the success of his first film Tetsuo Iron Man, one of the greatest most messed up frenetic and wrong films of all time, where flesh met metal in the heyday of the Japanese economic miracle. In the west its reception was very much of the oriental ‘other,’ a strange wonderful piece of cinema that couldn’t have come from anywhere but Japan. His subsequent features have been increasingly not of this time, much more personal and low key, moving well away from the Cronenburg meets Cyberpunk themes of his initial bombast. Nightmare Detective is a very peculiar construction, a more intellectual Freddy Krueger tale of dreams as the war zone, in which a serial killer is preying on young vulnerable minds. The only saviour is a reluctant suicidal Nightmare Detective (Ryuhei Matsuda) who can enter the dreams and help the victims against the master criminal ‘the guy’, played by Tsukamoto himself. The Detective is assisted by J-pop sensation Hitomi, a driven police officer assinged to the case, who’s own issues are interwoven into the fabric of the film. It’s strange surreal and wonderful, apparently the first of a series of sequels and possibly Tsukamoto’s most commercial film – though that’s not saying much.
Extra Features:
A 45 mins making of doco where we see Tsukamoto on set, as well as interviews with Tsukamoto and all the cast about the experiences of making the film.
-Bob Baker Fish
