New Restoration

“Probably my number one discovery of 2022.”

Sean Baker

Like fellow Directors Company co-founders Kurosawa Kiyoshi and Somai Shinji, Ikeda Toshiharu’s ​’80s were a decade of freedom. Having left Nikkatsu and its producer-controlled Roman Porno series behind, Ikeda could now fuse genres, influences, and tones in ways that still retain a merciless, awe-inspiring power over forty years later. From the opening scenes of Mermaid Legend, newlyweds Migiwa and Keisuke are rarely at peace: she harvests abalone as an ama diver; he pilots their small boat. Their efforts look insignificant next to the impending oceanfront development devised by the Miyamotos, a family empire whose corrupt power is unchecked. Ikeda limits our perspective during the luminous underwater scenes, a focus that tightens after violence rips through this pressurized world, revealing the film’s true nature: an exploitation film about the exploitation of women, labour, and nature, and a revenge thriller whose scale of cathartic fury is like nothing else in the genre.

In Japanese with English subtitles
Advisory: Mermaid Legend includes a scene of sexual violence.
Restored DCP courtesy of Error 4444

Best Director, Actress, Cinematography
Yokohama Film Festival 1985

“A masterful, transcendental work that utilizes sumptuous underwater photography and a delicate score from Honda Toshiyuki (later known for Rintaro’s 2001 anime feature Metropolis) to great effect.”

James Balmont, Dazed
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