------------------------------------------- draft written by me. Finished version is available here: http://curse.jp/misc/20130605051525.html ------------------------------------------- title: On EIRIN's Terrible Censorship of Franck Khalfoun's "Maniac" date: June 5, 2013 description: They really did not do this great film the justice it deserves. Franck Khalfoun's "Maniac" (2013) has been released in Japanese theater since 1st of this month. I went to the theater on the first day with much expectation. Yeah, the film was awesome but this is not what I want to talk about. In the opening a girl is chased by the killer (Elijah Wood) and killed by him at her apartment. What I saw on screen was... the head of the girl was bllured all of a sudden. I can't see what is happening. She must be taken her head skin off brutally. That's what I imagined. Yes, I imagined. "OMG! Bllured!? Is this really what Franck Khalfoun and Alexandre Aja created? No way!" I suddenly realized what they did to this film. I was totally dissapointed. The movie was great. I love every single moments of this film except these censored scenes. I felt sad, just sad. From where does this sadness come to my heart even though I saw a great movie? EIRIN (censorship organization in Japan) and Comstrock Group, Japanese distributor of "Maniac", censored several gore scenes to make it 15+ rating. Some were blurred out, some were darkened. I can't provide you the evidence of these details because it is on theater. I can't record it by using video camera. But it is true. The arguments about censorship of horrors has been very common on this planet. But in this case, there are worse things I would like to point out. It is kind of particular case of this country. After I finished the movie, I went back to home and started to search what's going on. I finally found out that EIRIN does not provide any information about what they did. Did they cut something? Did they make flim blurred? Darkened? Why did they do it in the first place? Nothing is answered. They just state that it contains disturbing gory materials and it is R-15. That's all we can get. This is big problem. I hate notorious BBFC but they provide censored information in detail at their website. Srdan Spasojevic's "Serbian Film" was banned in 2010 London FrightFest. Cut version DVD was released in UK in 2011. Koji Shiraishi's "Grotesque" was banned in UK. Tom Six's "Human Centipede II" was initially banned in UK. Afterwards BBFC demanded two minutes and thirty-seven seconds of cuts and finally granted cut version. These cases called a lot of arguments among people. I believe you remember them. I don't agree with BBFC's decisions. But, you know, they have been revealing all process including the reason why they need to be banned (or cut) and what should be done to release them. Thanks to this, English people can avoid to spend their money for what they don't want to see. I myself buy a lot of DVDs from amazon UK in regular basis and I can avoid what I don't want to see. This is what at least I want for EIRIN. If I could know thearical version is diffrent from original, I'd never go to the theater. It is not happy but way happier than spending my money to this censored version. I can wait until US unrated version is available at amazon.com. In Japan, there's no way to know what we're seeing in theater is the one which is director's intended genuine film. EIRIN and distributor don't reveal such information in all cases. I don't want to jump into boring arguments regarding censorship is good or bad. If people in higher place want to cut them, yeah, go ahead. Do as you like. But please tell us what you did and why you did. That's all I demand. And I let you know that there's worse thing in Japanese theatrical version of "Maniac." In this case, the blurred out and darken effect are used to hide gore scene, which means a lot of audience don't notice that it is done by EIRIN. They are forced to believe it is what director intended. What a shame! It is blasphemy, isn't it? I posted about this in my blog 2 days ago. This is Japanese page. http://curse.jp/misc/20130602112655.html Nealy 3000 Japanese people viewed it so far and still increasing (Thanks for all Retweets!). However Japanese official Maniac twitter have been ignoring us. They just ignore. They're retweeting only positive reviews every day. So, I would like to ask to filmmaker, Franck Khalfoun, Alexandre Aja and other people. Here's my question. Are you aware of this? Is it okay for you what they did to your film? I am a horror fan. I love you guys. I spent my money at the theater and I'm gonna buy unrated version US Blu-Ray. So let me indulge to tell you this. I wish you could do something (resist?) against Japanese buyers to avoid this at any costs. Thank you for reading this.