★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
Intensity 🩸1/2 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Directed by Sogo Ishii
Madcap mayhem abounds in The Crazy Family, director Sogo Ishii’s punk-spirited dark satire on Japanese society in the early 1980s.
If you’re in the mood for a horror-adjacent dark comedy that boasts a uniquely Japanese level of absurdity, may I strongly recommend director Sogo Ishii’s (who now goes by the name Gakuryu Ishii) 1984 slice of cinematic lunacy The Crazy Family (Gyakufunsha kazoku)? The film has just received a brand new, region-free digital restoration release for its 40th anniversary from Third Window Films as part of its Directors Company Collection, and it looks and sounds great.
Katsukuni (Katsuya Kobayashi) is the head of the Kobayashi household, a salary man who loves his his wife Saeko (Mitsuko Baisho), middle school daughter Erika (Yuki Kudo), and son Masaki (Yoshiki Arizono), and is proud to have just now moved them all from a public housing apartment building to their own house. Katsukuni has felt that something is off with his family members. For example, Saeko doesn’t mind doing a quasi-striptease dance in front of a group of elderly men, Erika (Yuki Kudo) fantasizes about becoming a pop star and actress, and Masaki insists on solitude while studying for university entrance as he surrounds himself with technology such as a lighted pyramid.
When Katsukuni’s elderly father Yaskaune (Hitoshi Ueki) suddenly moves into the house uninvited, he and the rest of the family start exhibiting increasingly bizarre and violent behavior. Katsukuni’s preoccupation with white ants possibly destroying the Kobayashi’s new home isn’t helping matters, either. Everything comes to an outlandish, frenetic head in a third-act that features several jaw-dropping events.
Ishii was both a punk rock musician and a budding filmmaker at the time he made The Crazy Family, and he brings that punk aesthetic to the film, including commenting on how Japan’s family and social structures at the time could perhaps use a good tearing down. The soundtrack serves up plenty of rock music to go along with the film’s frenzied pace.
The cast members go all-in with their terrific, committed performances, and Ishii serves up sight gags and chilling moments galore, finding a solid balance between both elements. Manic madness abounds in The Crazy Family. It took Ishii another 10 years before he could get the funding for another feature film, as this one pretty much bombed in Japan at the time of its release. It has aged well, though, and aficionados of black comedy and Japanese cinema should find it well worth watching.
Bonus Features
- Director approved remaster from the original negatives
- Feature length audio commentary by Tom Mes
- Director Gakuryu (ex-Sogo) Ishii interview
- “The Crazy Family: Sogo Ishii’s Wild Child” Video essay by James Balmont
- Slipcase with artwork from Gokaiju
- ‘Directors Company’ edition featuring insert by Jasper Sharp — limited to 2000 copies
Review by Joseph Perry
The Crazy Family, from Third Window Films, is available on Blu-ray from June 17, 2024.
