Lullaby to Kill Film Review

Aka - The Devil's Ballad

Aka - Akuma no temari-uta

I dove headfirst into my fourth Kôsuke Kindaichi tale of murder - all directed by Kon Ichikawa. These are mysteries as well as IQ tests. Trying to follow them and the multiple characters and their relationships to one another takes a master class in logistics. And if you have a bad cold as I do, you may need a scorecard. I should have kept one but will see if I can make any sense of it. The Kindaichi's novels were written by Seishi Yokomizo - over seventy of them of which I have read only two. Most have not been translated. But from the books and adaptations, it seems that they are steeped in large extended families, tradition, status, hate, grievances from the past and Japanese culture. And are convoluted as hell. The books are great - slow, filled with characters and death. Into these complex situations comes the private detective Kindaichi - a bit slovenly, a bushy head of hair, an unhurried approach who gets to the bottom of things eventually - but generally a number of other people have been murdered while he figures it out. He is no Sherlock Holmes - more akin to Columbo as he sorts through all the relationships of the people. Many take him for an idiot but his brain is always churning, shifting through the information.

Here Kindaichi (played as usual by Koji Ishizaka) is called to a rural village named Devil Skull Village, an appropriate name as it turns out, by an old friend, Inspector Isokawa, played by Tomisaburô Wakayama of Lone Wolf fame. He wants Kindaichi to help him solve a murder. One that he has been working on for twenty-years. A cold-cold case that he has become obsessed with over the years. The husband of the inn keeper (Keiko Kishi) was murdered and his face burnt off. It was never solved and Kindaichi tells him he has no idea how to proceed - but then more murders begin. And he suspects that they are tied to the original sin.

There are various families to keep track off - two that hold esteem in the village, others that have fallen out of favor and that of the inn keeper - along with other characters who come in and out of the story. And figures from the past who are gone. And somewhere in this is evil bubbling over for all these years. Old folk songs, various illegitimate daughters, an old man who claims to have ruined his family through degenerate living, a daughter with one side of her face a horrid red, families hating each other, an unspoken love, a spoken love and ghosts from the past all come into play as Kindaichi and Isokawa investigate. Too slowly for the dead. It is a lengthy 144-minutes but doesn't really feel like it.