One day the melancholy writer Edogawa Rampo (Japanese for Edgar Allan Poe) saw a newspaper article about a housewife who killed her husband by suffocating him in her trousseau. It surprises him that this affair is identical to as a murder in a short story that Rampo has just written. Rampo, is so intrigued that he goes looking for the woman in question. He falls in love with her and as a result starts writing a new story starring his resident sleuth Kogoro Akechi (and Rampo’s alter ego ! a rôle played by one of Japan’s most popular actors now, Masahiro Motoki). Should Rampo follow reality or the book? The film was controversial because Shochiku’s producer (one of Japan’s most powerful film empires), , did not think that the original director Mayuzumi Rintaro did not do a good enough job. He decided to take over directing himself and reshot eighty percent of the scenes. His film had to be much more radical and erotic. Both came out in Japanese cinemas at the same time.
