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DIRECTED BY: Shozin Fukui
FEATURING: Haji Suzuki, Onn-Chan
PLOT: Pinocchio 964, a malfunctioning sex slave, is thrown out onto the street by his dissatisfied owner. Without speech or memory he stumbles, literally, into the lap of an amnesiac woman, Himiko, who takes him home to care for him. As her memory returns she undergoes a cruel personality change, returning Pinocchio to the mysterious corporation that made him.
WHY IT’S ON THE BORDERLINE: 964 Pinocchio is certainly weird, but doesn’t hang together as a totally coherent film. However, days later, I was still thinking about it. I don’t think that the film is a satisfying blend of the weird and the entertaining; in fact some sequences are seriously hard work. Pinocchio deserves a second look in the future though, because odd and confusing as it was, distasteful as some scenes were, that sad sex slave worms his way into your mind.
COMMENTS: 964 Pinocchio is quite clearly a low budget film, but it is inventive, imaginative and uncompromising. Many scenes are filmed guerrilla style, and I found myself looking sympathetically at the bemused bystanders during some of the full-on craziness. A film which includes a three minute vomiting scene will not be to everyone’s taste; and it’s not as if that’s an uncharacteristic sequence. 964 Pinocchio is a wet, messy film throughout. Pinocchio emits a flood of custardy mess from some unspecified point on his head; Himiko regurgitates mounds of porridgy vomit before rolling in it and re-ingesting it; the head of the company which made Pinocchio continually eats cherries from a bowl of spittle. The film really screams in your face and refuses to apologize for any of its bizarre imagery.
The film introduces us to one of the two central characters, Pinocchio, as he flounders unwillingly in the middle of a M-F-F threesome. It’s an unerotic sex scene intercut with shots of a man in vague surgical garb, a huge drill bit entering someone’s head, and a voice informing someone that their memory will not return. The opening scene really lays the film’s cards on the table; it’s just going to get more confusing from here. Thrown onto the streets for failing to perform sexually, Pinocchio stumbles into Himiko. She’s sitting, looking through Continue reading BORDERLINE WEIRD: 964 PINOCCHIO (1991)