Mokouda (Shuuji Kashiwabara) displays the physical toll of his LONG DREAM.
dreams approach infinite length, he attains a hideous kind of im- mortality—and it is this residual that Kuroda hopes to bottle. It is a completely wacky story, yes—and so as not to spoil too much of it, I’ve held back some of the crazier developments. Yet director Higuchinsky tells this bi- zarre tale with a collage of refer- ence videos and night-vision surveillance footage that lends a strange air of verisimilitude to the lunacy within. Higuchinsky mounted LONG DREAM as an hour-long TV special, shot on video with a miserly budget, and gifted it all the cinematic style of a lavish feature film. At times it plays like a long-lost color epi- sode of THE OUTER LIMITS, and at other times it feels like your own most vivid nightmares have been teased out of your subcon- scious and broadcast to the world. Just months before mak- ing this TV movie, Higuchinsky completed UZUMAKI, an equally nightmarish quilt of strange visions cribbed from the pages
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of Junji Ito’s manga. Although the spirit of Ito’s EC Comics- style horror underlies this and UZUMAKI, the cinematic vision is that of a cult-flick auteur: Higuchinsky takes credits for screenwriting, directing, cinema- tography and editing. If you think that level of megalomania means he’s hogging the spotlight, bear in mind that “Higuchinsky” is a stage name (for Akihiro Higuchi), and note how his appearance in the bonus “making-of” interviews blurs his face digitally, as if the man were some kind of mob wit- ness concealing his identity. Ya gotta love this guy!
Higuchi-philes already know of an import all-region DVD of LONG DREAM, letterboxed but not wide- screen enhanced. The original videography was full-frame, mat- ted for broadcast, and as such there is no widescreen source from which to make a 16:9 version. This Region 1 disc from Tidepoint Pic- tures (under their “Bonehouse Asia” imprint) recycles the same video source as the import disc,
but with improved (and remov- able) English subtitles. The new disc also sports interviews with Higuchinsky, manga artist Junji Ito, and star Shuuji Kashiwabara (whose awkward vocal perfor- mance, deranged by his bedtime- time traveling, is sadly lost in the translation to subtitles).
Even eight years old, this low- budget hour-long special is punchier and more inventive than much of what fills the airwaves and DVD shelves today. Its offi- cial US DVD debut is overdue, deeply welcome and immensely satisfying.
THE MAN WHO COULD CHEAT DEATH
1959, Legend Films, DD-2.0/CC, $14.98, 82m 28s, DVD-1 By Tim Lucas
Long out of circulation, it is disappointing to find that Hammer’s immortality-themed horror film hasn’t aged so well. Anton Diffring stars (and there’s Problem #1) as Dr. Georges
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