Imprint (Masters of Horror episode)

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“Imprint”
Masters of Horror episode
Episode no. Season 1
Episode 13
Written by Daisuke Tengan
Directed by Takashi Miike
Guest stars Billy Drago
Youki Kudoh
Michie Itô
Toshie Negishi
Production no. 113
Original airdate N/A
Episode chronology
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"Haeckel's Tale" "The Damned Thing"

"Imprint" is the thirteenth episode of the first season of Masters of Horror. It aired in North America on February 25, 2006. It was originally scheduled to premiere on January 27, 2006 but was shelved by Showtime due to concerns over its extremely graphic and disturbing content, which features torture, incest and abortions. Hence, it was largely unavailable to American audiences until it was released to DVD on September 26, 2006.

The film was directed by Takashi Miike, a prolific director of yakuza films but also highly notable in the horror genre for his films Audition, Ichi The Killer and to a lesser extent, the original One Missed Call.

Contents

[edit] Plot

It's the late Victorian period. Christopher, an American journalist (played by Billy Drago), has been travelling around Japan for an unspecified period looking for Komomo (played by Michie Itô), a lost girlfriend who he promised to rescue from her life of prostitution and take with him to America. To that end he lands on an island solely populated by whores and their masters. He's solicited by a syphilitic tout (played by Mame Yamada) who claims not to have seen Komomo, but reckons he should enter the brothel anyway as he's got to spend the night somewhere. Christopher agrees, and asks for the company of a girl (played by Youki Kudoh) he'd seen lurking in the shadows at the back of the room where the prostitutes solicit for business.

The woman joins him in the room he's been given. She's disfigured on the right side of her face, and has been since childhood. She's also a rather disturbed character – she says she feels a greater connection with the dead than the living. When quizzed about Komomo, she says she had been there six months earlier, but hanged herself when the love of her life failed to find her and take her away. Christopher is naturally distraught at this, and takes refuge in a bottle of sake. About to fall asleep, he asks the woman for a bedtime story, a story about herself; what he's given is a version of her life where her mother, a midwife, sells her on when her father dies from a lung disease. Eventually she's sold on and ends up on the island. Komomo, she says, was the most popular girl there and was making all the other girls jealous. To that end, when a jade ring was stolen from the brothel's Madam, Komomo was blamed and tortured to confess. She had her underarms burned, and after this she was tied up, beaten and had needles driven under her fingernails and into the corners of her mouth. After all this suffering she killed herself in shame and torment.

Christopher of course does and doesn't want to hear this – but nevertheless refuses to believe all the woman is telling him and pleads with her to say more and tell the truth. Telling the story again we find her poor family wasn't nearly as loving and cheerful as they were in the first story. Instead the father was an alcoholic, and the mother wasn't a midwife but an abortionist. Helping her mother with her work, she was soon taken in by a Buddhist priest who begins her lifelong obsession with hell and eventually molests her as a little girl. After her father had beaten her mother one night, he raped her as well, and the frightened little girl beat him to death while he was using the restroom. When she was sold into prostitution Komomo was kind to her as in the first story, but in this version, she didn't hang herself.

This time the disfigured prostitute stole the ring and then planted Komomo's hairpin. She later killed Komomo after her torture; she cited the reason being that she herself was going to hell, and Komomo having such an evil friend as her would go to hell too. The only way to send Komomo to heaven was to betray her in such a way so that she could have her rightfully beautiful afterlife while the disfigured prostitute remained in hell. Christopher, barely keeping his sanity after hearing this demented tale still knows something is being left out. He commands the woman to tell him the whole truth, no matter how awful. The woman acquiescences and shows him her most terrible secret; a second head with little eyes and mouth in the center of a hand hidden beneath the hair on her head.

It turns out that her mother and father were also brother and sister, and the 'little sis' that had just been revealed was the unfortunate side effect of their incest. It commanded the young girl to kill her father, and later to steal the ring. She does add that the choice to kill Komomo was still very much hers. Then, making the situation worse the hand, in a little high pitched voice, begins talking like Komomo. This pushes Christopher over the edge and he shoots the prostitute and her little 'sis' after it claims he cannot kill her, once in the heart, and the final shot in the head. In the final revelation, or transformation (depending on the viewer's perspective of the story) the bullet riddled body turns into Komomo before dying.

The epilogue finds Christopher in a Japanese prison, his only company in the cell being the ghosts of his past, Komomo and his dead sister.

[edit] DVD and Blu-ray

Imprint DVD
Imprint DVD

The DVD was released on September 26, 2006. It was the thirteenth episode of the first season and the tenth to be released on DVD. The episode appears on the fourth volume of the Blu-ray compilation of the series.

The American and some international editions of the DVD feature a controversial audio commentary by Chris D. and Wyatt Doyle of the web salon New Texture ( [1] )

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