This review may contain spoilers
Eros + Thanatos = taxidermy
The enigmatic and alluring Black Lizard, a highly wanted criminal and thief who collects jewels, orders the kidnapping of Sanaye, the daughter of the jeweler who owns the precious diamond called “Star of Egypt”; Private investigator Kogorō Akechi sets out on her trail, engaging in a thrilling duel full of twists and turns with the cunning and brilliant collector, who, in addition to her passion for jewelry, also reveals an unusual penchant for human taxidermy…In 1968, in addition to directing avant-garde films for Toei, director Kinji Fukasaku accepted an offer from Shochiku to adapt—with great success—one of Edogawa Ranpo’s most famous novels, “Black Lizard”. The film was, however, based on the theatrical adaptation staged by Yukio Mishima. Isao Kimura was cast in the lead role as Detective Akechi, while the famous drag queen Akihiro Maruyama (Akihiro Miwa) was chosen to play the female lead.
Nearly 60 years after its release, “Black Lizard” continues to be regarded as a film that defies categorization, one that eludes any single definition. At first glance, it might be dismissed as an elegant crime thriller set against a “cops and robbers” backdrop, but it immediately becomes clear that the film is, in reality, a decidedly elusive cinematic work: decadent melodrama, psychological noir, pop spectacle, filmed theater, and a spy story coexist in a balance as improbable as it is fascinating.
It is likely that its hybrid nature is the reason it has been difficult to place this film within Fukasaku’s filmography; he is best remembered for his revolutionary yakuza eiga films of the 1970s, which are often cited by Hollywood masters of genre cinema—Martin Scorsese above all.
And yet, rather than a mere, perhaps impromptu episode, “Black Lizard” now stands as a cult classic capable of engaging with an international cultural landscape in the midst of transformation: within it, we can find the spectacular elegance of James Bond films, the colourful explosion of Pop Art, camp aesthetics, Japanese theatre, a certain colour palette typical of European cinema, literary decadence and even hints of classic Gothic horror; everything seems to merge into a visual universe where every costume, every set and every gesture combine to transform the narrative into an experience that is, above all, aesthetic.
Fukasaku’s – successful – challenge lies in going beyond the police investigation, instead staging a sort of war of aesthetics, in which every character, every setting and every object seems to be asking the same question: namely, whether beauty can survive the passage of time by transforming itself into an image, a simulacrum or a work of art.
At the heart of this aesthetic universe is, inevitably, its leading lady. Rather than simply portraying Black Lizard, Akihiro Miwa transforms her into a true pop icon ahead of her time, making her own body the film’s primary narrative tool. Each new appearance coincides with a metamorphosis: wigs, flamboyant outfits, jewellery, hairstyles and theatrical poses do not merely serve a decorative purpose, but continually redefine the character’s identity.
She does not merely wear the costumes; rather, she seems almost to inhabit them, transforming every entrance onto the stage into a performance in its own right. In this sense, Miwa’s acting transcends the very concept of performance, merging with the profoundly artificial nature of the film, where the boundary between human being, work of art and spectacle becomes increasingly blurred.
It is indeed this centrality of the image that makes “Black Lizard” much more than a sophisticated crime thriller. The protagonist’s obsession with jewellery and absolute beauty does not merely conform to the conventions of the crime story, but introduces a theme that runs through the entire work: the desire to shield what is perfect from the passage of time. In this universe dominated by artifice, every body, every object and every set seem to aspire to a form of eternity, transforming the film into a surprisingly complex reflection on the relationship between aesthetics, possession and death.
The more one looks at it, the less “Black Lizard” appears to be a mere 1968 pop thriller. Fukasaku crafts a work that traverses the detective novel, decadent melodrama, theatre, Gothic horror, camp aesthetics and pop art, without definitively belonging to any of these genres. Through the magnetic figure of Akihiro Miwa, the film draws on the legacy of Poe, reinvents it through Ranpo, elevates it with Mishima, and imbues it with the morbid elegance of Wilde and Beardsley. The result is a work in which beauty is not to be regarded as a prize to be won, but rather as a curse to be preserved.
For the Black Lizard, love does not consist in possessing a living human being, but rather in snatching them from the grip of time, transforming them into an eternal simulacrum. It is in this tension between eros and death, between desire and artifice, that the film finds its core identity, its deepest essence, establishing itself not only as one of the most eccentric cult classics of 1960s Japanese cinema, but also as one of its most surprising points of convergence with the great Western decadent imagination.
Thanks to this inspired insight, the film definitively transcends the boundaries of a mere adaptation of Edogawa Ranpo’s work. A dense web of cultural references spanning East and West takes shape around the obsession with the Black Lizard. The Japanese writer’s ero-guro imagery engages in a dialogue with the decadence of Oscar Wilde (thanks to the trait d’union provided by Mishima), with the sinuous elegance of Aubrey Beardsley’s revealing illustrations, and with the long shadow of Edgar Allan Poe, an author to whom Ranpo himself paid homage through his very pseudonym.
Even certain echoes of classical Gothic cinema – from Michael Curtiz’s “Mystery of the Wax Museum” to Edgar G. Ulmer’s “The Black Cat” – seem to resurface in the Black Lizard’s lair, where beauty is wrested from life to be transformed into an object of contemplation. More than just a crime thriller, “Black Lizard” thus becomes a surprising crossroads of different artistic traditions, capable of blending Western decadent melodrama with Japanese psychological noir into a work of extraordinary iconographic richness.
Seen in this light, the Black Lizard transcends the role of a mere thief or collector, or that of the classic femme fatale, to take on the almost priestess-like role of an aesthetic guardian. Every gem she steals, every body she preserves, every work of art gathered in her home is driven by the same obsession: to halt the passage of time, to rescue beauty from its inevitable decay and transform it into an eternal image. Her collection is not made up of objects, but of crystallised moments, of lives suspended at the moment of their absolute perfection.
It is only in his encounter with Detective Kogorō Akechi that this value system reveals its fragility. What unfolds between the two is not merely a detective duel, but a subtle game of seduction, intelligence and mutual recognition, in which the boundary between hunter and prey gradually dissolves. Akechi represents the only form of beauty that the Black Lizard cannot transform into an object of contemplation, because he continues to elude her through his indomitable vitality. For this reason, the protagonist’s final act does not feel like a surrender, but rather an extreme affirmation of her own worldview: in a universe where love is synonymous with the absolute possession of the desired object, to survive would mean accepting the failure of her own obsession.
If “Black Lizard” continues to exert a unique fascination even today, it is largely because it defies any definitive classification. Its most enduring strength seems to lie just in its ability to transform popular cinema into a spectacle of the image, where literature and theatre, East and West, eros and death come together in a celebration of beauty that is as refined as it is unsettling.
It is no coincidence that the film’s journey gradually leads the viewer away from everyday reality: from the bright lights and streets of Japan’s major cities to the confined spaces of the train, from the sea to the isolated refuge of the Black Lizard, a dwelling suspended outside of time where the protagonist keeps her collection of bodies and dreams. The geographical journey thus becomes an inner journey, a gradual entry into the mental universe of a woman who refuses to accept the transience of existence.
Fukasaku seems to suggest that beauty, the very moment it attempts to become eternal, inevitably risks ceasing to belong to life. In the Black Lizard’s lair, time seems to have stood still: everything that is perfect is preserved, but nothing truly continues to live. This is the ultimate price of the illusion of eternity, the paradox of an aesthetic which, in its attempt to defeat death, ends up embracing it.
8 ½
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Dedicated to Akihiro (Miwa) Maruyama: 15 May 1935 – 20 June 2026
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