Takaski Miike's IMPRINT

So a number of months ago, Showtime decided to put the kibosh on the television debut of Takashi Miike's IMPRINT, the maverick director's entry for the 13-part MASTERS OF HORROR series. Series creator Mick Garris claimed the segment was one of the most extreme things he had ever seen. Sure, Miike is a known whackjob, but presumably the episode had a script, and presumably the script was approved by someone at some point. What was all the fuss about?

Now, I certainly understand Showtime's position. As I've stated earlier, they are a corporation and serve a public interest. An interest that, if maintained, results in lots of money. If they cheese off their public, they lose money. So if they feared the episode would scare people into cancelling subscriptions, or put off viewers who may be considering subscribers, then they reserve the right to not air it.

Was their fear warranted?

I don't know... maybe. Probably not, though. I couldn't imagine that the fallout, if any, would've amounted to more than a late page mention in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter.

Ulitimately, the story was pretty silly, dealing with an American (hilariously hamming it up by Billy Drago who seemed to be channeling the dude that played Dr. Doom in Roger Corman's FANTASTIC FOUR MOVIE) who is returning to Japan to claim his love, a prostitute who had ended up on some weird island filled with riff-raff.

He meets up a with a nastily-scarred prostitute who tells a tale concerning Drago's mistress. Her story is steeped in deception, changing from one moment to the next for some reason. The ultimate truth is revealed... and then it gets pretty silly.

Now, the controversy stems, I imagine, from two different elements of the story. The first is an abortion sub-plot; the second, a doozy of a torture scene.

The abortion sub-plot is pretty ugly; dealing with the scarred hooker's memories as a child as she accompanied her mom to her mom's job -- which is aborting fetuses. Some of these are shown pretty graphically.

The torture scene is also pretty unsettling -- a three to four minute sequence that had me holding my remote control to my forehead, letting is dip into my line of sight every now and again. It was bloody awful. Nothing I intend to see again. I do have to admit, though, that there was a beauty to the repellant nature of the scene. It was staged elegantly and quietly.

I have to say that the entirety of the episode was either repellant or silly, though; if I owned a cable company, maybe I would have thought twice about airing it, too... though I'm sure I'da let it fly. The fact remains that the show is called MASTERS OF HORROR and it aired at 10:00 at night. They don't seem to have any qualms with airing things like WRONG TURN and the new TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. Both pretty repellant themselves.

I was sorely hoping for an hour of transgression with this one. Something that would make me fear for what was going to happen next. I mean, yeah.. the torture sequence was interesting, but it struck me as empty in the context of the story.

So why was I watching it? Why should I watch it?

Just to see Billy Drago flailing his arms all over the place like some damn fool?

I guess that did kinda make it worth it.