We made it one block before there was an incident. I know we’re supposed to wait for the electric sign with the walking man to flash on, but I had a guy bleeding in my arms. A green Subaru Outback stopped just short of sending Waldo and I flying. Some broccoli-headed teen honked on his horn and that spooked Edwige, my kangaroo companion from my misadventures in North America, something fierce. She bounced over to the car and started punching the windshield.

— To be continued. 

I’m sorry I missed last week’s movie review which would have been Inugami, a movie about a cursed woman who sleeps with her brother (but she didn’t know it was her brother) and gives birth to a stillborn baby. Many years later, she has an affair with a young high school teacher and gets pregnant again. Guess what? It turns out the high school teacher is the son she thought was stillborn, but was actually switched at birth. And now she’s carrying his baby! I can’t even wrap my head around this and all I want is a simple horror story from the nation of Japan, not Oedipal weirdness. 

Fortunately, I discovered 2007’s Exte: Hair Extensions from director Sion Sono. We begin with an inspection of a cargo container filled with wet, moldy black hair, The customs officers freak out when they discover the body of a young woman buried in this disgusting hair and the police are brought in to investigate. They figure the girl was victim to an organ harvesting ring and then stuffed away in a container of hair extensions. Yamazaki (Ren Osugi) is one of the morticians working with the police and he happens to be a tricophile. What is a tricophile you may ask? Someone who fetishizes human hair. Hey, let your freak flag fly, but stealing the corpse of an organ harvesting victim and stuffing her in your apartment may be going too far!

We’re then introduced to our protagonist, Yuko (Chiaki Kuriyama), who is a hairdresser in training. While working hard to become the best stylist she can be, Yuko comes home to find that her abusive stepsister Kiyomi (Tsugumi) has left her eight-year-old daughter, Mami (Miku Sato), for Yuko to look after. Kiyomi has more important things to do like getting wasted with criminals. This is good for luttle Mami as it gives her some time off from the daily beatings of her mother.

Meanwhile, back at Yamazaki’s place, our hair enthusiast is ecstatic over the fact that this corpse is growing long luxurious hair from various wounds and orifices. This sort of thing would normally freak out a character in a horror movie, but Yamazaki is on cloud nine. He trims the hair off of the corpse and stops by local hair salons to pass out free hair extension samples. And then the hair possesses a hairdresser and she mutilates her client. No tip for her. 

Naturally, Yamazaki makes his way over to Yuko’s salon dressed like a demented Uncle Sam. Of course, he becomes obsessed with Yuko’s hair, and in his defense, her hair is perfect. You just want to reach out and touch–never mind.

If you want scenes of wet, disgusting hair attacking victims in creative ways (and I know you do), check out this movie. Exte is the most interesting movie I’ve seen this year. 

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, episode 450, episode 477, episode 491, episode 492, episode 493, episode 495, episode 496, episode 545, episode 546, episode 547, episode 548, episode 549, episode 575, episode 596, episode 597, episode 598, episode 599, episode 642, episode 643, episode 644, and episode 645) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.