The Warped Ones is a brief, breezy, free-flowing social satire of teenage disillusionment in sunny post-war Japan where the reckless angry youth try to fill the emptiness in their lives by running around committing crimes, antagonising the public, and seeking personal revenge. It's an explosive film rife with frantic, jazzy cinematography that perfectly aligns with an even more frantic, even jazzier soundtrack that plays anytime Tamio Kawachi does something cool or fucked up — a.k.a. 80% of the film.
Caustic, violent, incendiary — these are just some of the words I'd use to describe the madness that is The Warped Ones. Some sites label this a black comedy but I don't see it. A satire, sure, that I get. The way Koreyoshi Kurahara depicts this kind of late '50s - early '60s juvenile delinquent as particularly hollow, surviving purely off animalistic behaviour and raw impulse — it's quite clearly a critique of these youths and how their communities have left them behind in the wake of the war. It's incisive commentary on the youth at large, but it's not trying to make you laugh at them.
It's a complete mental collapse of a movie, and I had a damn good time with it.
The Warped Ones is a brief, breezy, free-flowing social satire of teenage disillusionment in sunny post-war Japan where the reckless angry youth try to fill the emptiness in their lives by running around committing crimes, antagonising the public, and seeking personal revenge. It's an explosive film rife with frantic, jazzy cinematography that perfectly aligns with an even more frantic, even jazzier soundtrack that plays anytime Tamio Kawachi does something cool or fucked up — a.k.a. 80% of the film.
Caustic, violent, incendiary — these are just some of the words I'd use to describe the madness that is The Warped Ones. Some sites label this a black comedy but I don't see it. A satire, sure, that I get. The way Koreyoshi Kurahara depicts this kind of late '50s - early '60s juvenile delinquent as particularly hollow, surviving purely off animalistic behaviour and raw impulse — it's quite clearly a critique of these youths and how their communities have left them behind in the wake of the war. It's incisive commentary on the youth at large, but it's not trying to make you laugh at them.
It's a complete mental collapse of a movie, and I had a damn good time with it.
