The Military Policeman and the Dismembered Beauty Film Review

Aka - Kenpei to Barabara Shibijin

Oddly is what appears to have brought most reviewers to this fairly obscure Japanese murder mystery. The main programmer of a video game called Earthbound saw a scene from the film as a child that he took for a rape and it deeply affected him and has something to do with this video game. And that was enough for people to seek out this film. In fact, it is a not rape but murder that he saw. He didn't wait around for the dismemberment or he would know. It is a solid if not inventive police procedural. What is most interesting about it is the time, location and circumstances. Though this was directed in 1957, the film takes place in 1937 partly in a military barracks of men who are waiting to be sent to the war in Manchuria or have been brought back.

When the soldiers complain about the taste of the water in the barrack's well, their superior officer beats them for being so disrespectful. Till he takes a gulp and almost throws up. No one says, see? They pull up a torso without a head or limbs. Later they have to eat food cooked in the well water and when they complain, they are told, what you will have to eat in Manchuria will be much worse. It is determined that the body was from a woman murdered about six months ago. In the opening scene, the viewer had seen a man and woman together and she was pressuring him to marry her because she was pregnant but his face is never shown.

The base M.P. decides he has enough evidence against one of the men (Shigeru Amachi) and tortures him for days to confess. Meantime, the good M.P. (Shôji Nakayama) and his assistant have been sent from Tokyo and he uses different methods to investigate. Basic police procedure. Find out who the dead woman is. Find the body parts and connect them so that she can find peace. Get revenge for her. And he bows to her. It is just good police work that gets him to the identity of the killer. At the same time, the two M.P's are housed with an old friend of the assistant who is in Manchuria, but his two attractive sisters are running a small bar. Romance comes calling. But first find the head. A little anti-climatic when the killer is found - I was expecting something more Agatha Christie like.