7 Dollar Popcorn Presents the 7 Dollar Popcorn FILMuary Spectacular: 28 Days of Movie Mayhem Day 26: Imprint

Cheating for the first time it's 7 Dollar Popcorn Presents the 7 Dollar Popcorn FILMuary Spectacular: 28 Days of Movie Mayhem. Today, like I said, I'm cheating. After 25 consecutive days of movies, we're going to look at an episode of a television show. The show is Showtime's Masters of Horror. The episode is the Takasi Miike episode that went unaired in the US titled Imprint.

A group of guys is on a boat. They're headed for an island of demons and whores. Christopher is looking for a whore he fell in love with many years ago. He wants to take her back to America and marry hear. The whore's name was Komomo. I say "was" because she apparently killed herself. Instead, Christopher meets a whore called The Woman.

"I feel pretty. Oh so pretty"

It's The Woman who explains to Christopher what happened to his love, Komomo. (By the way, isn't it kind of weird to say you fell in love with someone because they reminded you of your sister?) Her brutal torture over a stolen ring. Incense sticks in her armpits and needles in her gums and under her fingernails. But, it's a lie. But, Chris doesn't want the lie. He wants to know "the truth".

Torture is so sexy!



"Growing up my choices were ballerina, acrobat and whore. I decided to go for all three"

The Woman framed and killed Komomo. Chris still isn't convinced that this is the entire story. So, The Woman tells another version. Her parents were beggers, moving from villiage to villiage. Mom was less of a midwife and more of an...abortionist. Dad was a drunk and a wife beater. Upon her birth, The Woman was tossed in the river, where she survived for two days until mom decided to be a mom. As she grew up, she helped her mom with the baby killin...and the pleasing of dad...

After that it gets weird. She has a sister. And by sister I mean she has a hand and face growing out of her head like a demon. You see, mom and dad were siblings. So, inevitably, they were gonna be fucked up. It was the sister that stole the ring. It was The Woman who killed Komomo.

A tale of two sisters

Miike really has an interest in strange characters. Freaks. You look at his history, Ichi the Killer, The Great Yokai War, Izo. He has this love affair with crazy characters and fucked up situations. Imprint is a story of whores, torture, incest, dead babies, demons, murder and personal hells. And, it's not easy to watch.

It's Miike's take on Memoirs of a Geisha. It's everything you expect from Miike. It's pretty to look at, in it's own sort of way. The characters are certainly unique. The actors themselves have some trouble with the English dialogue. There's really not much else to say about it. If you're a fan of Miike, you'll probably dig this. If not, this won't change your mind. I don't know that I can really give an accurate rating to this. It was well done, but I was really kind of grossed out and put off by it. If I had a cable network, I'm not sure that I would have shown it either. So, I'm going to go dead middle on it and give it 5 stolen rings out of ten.