This is based on a Kosuke
Kindaichi mystery novel by Seishi Yokomizo. One of seventy-seven such mysteries.
The novels have been adapted into video many times - either as theatrical
films or as TV. Three of them alone were produced in 1977. The most famous
adaptations are the six from director Kon Ichikawa starring Koji Ishizaka,
as the ill-kempt eccentric detective. I have seen two of those and read three
of the novels. And I was about 60% of the way through this book according
to Kindle when I admit to losing patience and decided to watch the film and
see who the guilty party is. There is murder after murder after murder and
the narrator in the book was annoying me by withholding clue after clue from
Kosuke Kindaichi. This adaptation though is not one of the Kon Ichikawa ones
and it does not star Koji Ishizaka. For as far as I had gotten, the director
Yoshitarô Nomura makes quite a few changes that lessen the potential
horror (till the end) and creepiness of the book - and presents it in such
a way that I was able to guess the killer fairly early on while in the book
I had no clue. But like the book, it keeps Kindaichi to the side until near
the end. Somewhat surprising though considering who plays Kindaichi.
Tatsuya (Ken'ichi Hagiwara) is working in Tokyo when his boss mentions that
he saw a newspaper ad that someone was looking for him. Tatsuya goes to visit
a lawyer and is asked a battery of questions and has to show the burn marks
on his back before he is accepted as the Tatsuya that the lawyer is looking
for. Once that is done, he introduces Tatsuya to his elderly grandfather.
Tatsuya had been brought to Tokyo by his mother at a very young age and not
told anything about his family. The mother died a few years later after marrying
another man. Grand-dad is just about to tell Tatsuya of his family when he
keels over dead - from arsenic poisoning. Death number one. Many more to
go. As Tatsuya finds out later on, the village and his family are cursed
from an event that took place over 400-years previously and from his real
father who went mad and killed thirty-two villagers. Some of this is shown
in graphic bloody detail. Not surprisingly, the village does not welcome
him with open arms.
Once he gets to the village, he discovers that he is in line for the inheritance
and they are enormously wealthy - run by his two small aunts who are white-haired
twins and who mysteriously walk about the grounds at night. He also has a
half-sister and half-brother but the brother is sickly and they want a strong
person to carry on the family line. And then more people begin to be murdered.
And suspicion falls on Tatsuya since he is always around. Finally, Kindaichi
shows up, but it takes him a while to figure it out by delving into family
records that go back generations. Meanwhile the dead bodies are piling
up.
This runs 2.5 hours but still leaves out a lot from the book - characters
and murders. Tatsuya who is the narrator in the novel irritates me here as
well - he barely says anything, asks nothing and is very passive and nearly
cowardly. But worse, the mystery breaks the cardinal rule of a murder novel.
At the end in the denouement, Kindaichi tells the viewers who and why but
not how. How did this person manage to so easily kill so many people. Even
Columbo always does that. I nearly forgot to mention that Kindaichi is played
by Tora-san himself, Kiyoshi Atsumi.
