The Warped Ones (1960)
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
"The Warped Ones" begins with a little vignette as we see Yuki (Yuko Chiyo), a pretty and hysterical young woman, chatting up a white, presumably wealthy patron at a bar. She's serving as a decoy for her friend Akira (Tamio Kawachi), giving him the signal when it's time for him to move in and pick the gentleman's pocket. Unbeknownst to them both, they're being watched by an undercover cop, who's been tipped off by a beat reporter to keep an eye on those two. When the pilfering turns into an arrest, a brief scuffle breaks out between Akira and the newspaper man, with the news hound getting the worst of the deal as his distraught girlfriend looks on. Akira and Yuki are cuffed and hauled away to juvenile detention, where they receive further education in the art and science of petty crime as the opening credits roll. And with that, 'The Warped Ones' pushes the accelerator to the floor and never lets up. - Actors:
- Tamio Kawaji, Yuko Chiyo, Eiji Gô, Hiroyuki Nagato, Noriko Matsumoto, Kôjirô Kusanagi, Chico Roland, Chigusa Takayama, Reiko Arai, Yôko Kosono, Shôki Fukae, Maurice Gruel
- Directors:
- Koreyoshi Kurahara
- Producers:
- Takeshi Yamamoto
- Writers:
- Nobuo Yamada
- Aka:
- The Weird Love Makers / Kyônetsu no kisetsu
- Genres:
- Classics, Drama
- Countries:
- Japan
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Reviews (1) of The Warped Ones
Jazz, Jitters, and Youth on the Edge - The Warped Ones review by griggs
Right from the off, you can feel the itch under the skin: young people with nowhere to put their energy, so it comes out as noise, speed, and terrible choices. The Warped Ones follows a jazz-mad delinquent fresh out of jail, ricocheting around Tokyo like he’s allergic to consequences. The film keeps asking what happens when you drop that kind of personality into a society built on keeping a lid on things.
What I loved is the push-pull between looseness and control. The bebop score is restless and hot-blooded, while Kurahara’s camera is crisp, fast, and oddly exact — like it’s trying to frame chaos without calming it down. It’s got that Breathless snap, with a bit of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’s sour youth anger, and the on-the-run paranoid tingle of Mickey One: youth as momentum, crime as a reflex, everyone acting before they think.
It doesn’t always land cleanly, and the shock tactics can feel a bit eager. But it’s stylish, and hard to shake — a grim little jolt that still buzzes after the credits.