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Pinocchio 964: Limited Edition
Blu-ray B - United Kingdom - 88 Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (21st March 2025). |
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The Film
 With the likelihood of her memory ever returning, hospital patient Himiko (Onn-chan) spends her days building a map as a means of trying to reconstruct the life she has lost or create a new one for herself and others like a child-like (or dog-like) man (Haji Suzuki) who literally falls into her lap. She takes him into her home – a makeshift room deep in the tunnels of the city power plant – and tries to teach him how to speak, starting with the name she gives him "Pinocchio" based on the enigmatic tattoo on his back: the square root of 964 and the word Pinocchio. When Pinocchio suddenly regains his speech, Himiko realizes that he too has lost his memories. What neither of them know, however, is that Pinocchio 964 was a sex slave whose owner A-ko (Ranko) was dissatisfied with his inability to maintain an erection, so she had his memories wiped via a powerdrill to the head and her maid toss him out onto the street as rubbish. When Pinocchio's supplier (Rakumaro San'yûtei), upon being called by A-ko demanding a replacement model, learns that Pinocchio has been turned out onto the streets, he sends his underlings to hunt Pinocchio down before his operation is exposed. As Pinocchio's memories start to return, however, his body starts to undergo monstrous changes suggesting to Himiko that he is more than an amnesiac and less than human. Himiko's own memories are also triggered by the traumatic sites, and the results are no fairy tale ending. Although films involving cyborgs and questions of memory and identity inevitably invite parallels to Blade Runner, Shozin Fukui's Pinocchio 964 is odd Japanese combination of pinku eiga sex film and Tetsuo, the Iron Man-esque nineties A/V cyberpunk (Fukui was second unit director on the Shinya Tsukamoto film). Whereas Tsukamoto's film is a lean sixty-eight minutes of frenzy, excess is the name of the game with Fukui and, although some scenes drag on and on, the ninety-eight minute running time seems to be less the result of using every usable bit of footage – there are plenty of lengthy takes with hairs in the gate and shots with splice lines at the top or bottom of the frame – than to assail the viewer with rivers of blood and ever-growing mounds of vomit that looks like polenta, and the scenes of Onn-chan having a breakdown while followed by a mobile camera through an underground shopping mall and collapsing in an expanding puddle of bodily fluidts seems to have been inspired by Andrzej Żuławski's Possession. Performances are pitched over-the-top from the get-go to the point where Suzumi seems understated even as he runs through the streets of Tokyo screaming and dragging a bolder behind him on a chain. In spite of this, the film manages a few moments of tenderness before turning the tables, and there is also a humorous subplot about one of Pinocchio's hunters (Kôji Ôtsubo) and his desire to adopt a child (which does not go where you think it will). A film like this can only end by running out of steam, and it does, allowing the audience to take a breath before interrupting the credits with an amusing bit of candid photography of the cast that suggest that they brought a lot to their roles themselves. The low budget futuristic setting is realized by a combination of depopulated businesses and the careful selection of various industrial locations and brutalist buildings and tungsten-balanced film that translate dusk exteriors to nocturnal blues and florescent lighting into sickly greens rather than the high-contrast black and white of the Tsukamoto film, and the scoring is more diverse and less aggressively jarring. Fukui followed Pinocchio 964 with Rubber's Lover which took five years to complete and is similarly over-the-top. 
Video
Pinoccchio 964 was shot in 16mm and shown theatrically on the underground circuit in Japan. Unlike Tetsuo, the Iron Man, the film was unavailable legitimately in the U.S. or U.K. officially until Unearthed Films' DVD – also available in a limited Cyberpunk Collection with Rubber's Lover – and more recently Media Blasters' Blu-ray and 4K UltraHD. We have not seen the 4K edition or found any reviews of it so we cannot comment on it but 88 Films' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.33:1 pillarboxed fullscreen Blu-ray seems to faithfully represent the raw textural nature of the film from the fish-eye wide angle lens close-ups of flesh covered in sweat, mucus, blood, flour, latex, various foodstuffs, and vomit substitutes. Grain is pronounced in both bright close-ups and the various darker scenes while the saturated gels that punctuate some otherwise muted shots are less noisy than on DVD. Splice lines pop up at the top and bottom of the frame but that seems to be less a framing issue than the cheap nature of the film's post-production, particularly when it comes to some bits of rapid editing where the shot changes are a tad bumpy. 
Audio
The sole audio option is a Japanese LPCM 2.0 mono track in which the crunchy elements are part of the film's music and sound design – in his interview, Fukui likes all of the film's sound elements to music – while both set and post-dubbed dialogue exchanges sound cleanly recorded and mixed. Optional English subtitles are free of errors. 
Extras
Extras start off with an interview with director Shozin Fukui (32:58) recorded for the 2007 DVD in which Fukui refers to written remarks as he discusses how being in a punk band and shooting video for live concerts, plays, and modern art along with a punk personality who was once to be his lead before suddenly passing away of lung cancer inspired him to make a film. He discusses the challenges and benefits of a low budget in terms of careful planning, scheduling, and spending as well as distinguishing his work from "cyberpunk" likening it more to "industrial noise punk." He also debunks the rumor that the film was shot guerilla-style and makes some vague remarks about his future projects and his desire to do something more script-focused. "Pozzie Punk" (20:56) is a new interview with Fukui who fills out his remarks from the earlier interview with discussion of his college shorts, working under Tsukamoto first as a driver and then assistant along with uncredited experiences on other mainstream sets before deciding to make his feature debut something extreme with Suzuki who was a college schoolmate who had the "first mohawk in Japan" while identifying the mysterious Onn-chan as an acquaintance and the rest of the cast as people he met at various live concert and Butoh dancing events.  "Tokyo Noise" (20:56) is a new introduction by film historian Stephen Thrower who confirms the influence on Fukui of Żuławski's Possession along with identifying themes that run throughout Fukui's filmography including the alienating and exclusionary nature of public spaces and the flipside of urban architecture reveling the "machinery of the city" and its dehumanizing qualitites. He also discusses Fukui's location shooting style with unknowing extras in the context of Tokyo street performers. The disc also includes two of Fukui's short films "Gerorisuto" (1986; 11:03) and "Caterpillar" (1988; 32:08) – the latter not a Rampo adaptation – along with a teaser trailer (1:51).
Packaging
The first pressing of 3,000 copies includes a numbered OBI strip, a region 2 PAL DVD copy and a booklet with an essay by Mark Player (not supplied for review). 
Overall
Pinocchio 964 is less of an indie Blade Runner than an odd combination of pinku eiga sex film and Tetsuo, the Iron Man-esque nineties A/V cyberpunk
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