Deranged: Confessions of a Necrophile (1974)

After Alan Ormsby-Honda heard of his twin brother's success with Gojira, in 1953, he bided his time and came up with the ultimate Kaiju, based on the real killer and, maybe, necrophiliac, Ed Gein. The result was Deranged: Confessions of a Necrophile, or like it was called in it's Japanese release: エドGein対メスの恐竜, which means literary "Ed Gein versus the Female Dinosaurs. He casted Roberts Blossoms, fresh from the success of his latest Tokusatu: "FIGHT! STRIKE! Pale Poetry Old Man, You Rule!", 110 episodes of Kaiju-action between a superhero reciting poetry and rubber monsters from France.

Shot in Canada, because the actors are more beautiful there, Ormsby and his team constructed a impressive miniature landscape in the form of a barn and a house, ready to be burned down at the end - a detail that was missed because lack of time and it's just explained in the end. It tells the story of giant monster Ed Gein, who can skin other monsters alive with his Mega-Laser-Action-Beam (from his nose) and an impressive knowledge of wrestling moves. It's cheesy, but never childish. The "female dinosaurs" (to quote the Japanese), Macobbalon, Maureenselbytron and Sallyorgon delivers a good fight before they're killed off one by one in spectacular, explosive fashion.

Much like the Koreans and Yongary, Ormsby-Honda hoped for a similar success - and it worked well. The script is gritty and quite violent for being a Canadian Kaiju, with impressive special effects and a wonderful dread all over the film. It's moody and has a lot of atmosphere, a dark and quite nasty monster movie the way only the Japanese-Canadian could do it. Especially Blossoms impresses with a multi-layered portrait of a monster who just wants to kill other monsters, but in the end kills one to many and is put under psychiatric care.

The film became quite a success and a sequel was planned, Ed Gein vs. Mecha-Ed Gein, but was scrapped because Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel made a similar movie, much like Toho's Destroy All Monsters, with a whole family of flying, rotating, fire-breathing rednecks called the Sawyer Family. The movie is mostly known as The Texas Chainsaw Monsters, but we fans prefer to call it by it's original title: "The Super-Angry Flying Machine Man - The Friend of All Children" (that's a direct translation from Japanese).

Still controversial today, it's also one of the best Japanese-Canadian Kaiju-productions ever made. The miniature work is impressive and the fight between Ed Gein (or Ezra Cobb as he's called here, legal problems during the production) and the enormous Maureenselbytron is the highlight. Blossoms continued to work in television doing the lead in "Super-Mega-Canadian: Strike Force 10000!" and "Canadian Rider 1-2-3: GO GO GO!". Ormsby-Honda later tried to revive his success in the early nineties with Ed Gein vs. Mecha-Dahmer, but it failed at the box office.

It truly deserves a special edition blu-ray release and IF they can dig up that alternate ending, where Ed Gein is fighting a giant "Walrupus" I'm sure it's not only me that will be very happy!