Production Notes by Tsurisaki

Author: ymo79

You can use internet archive to access the site where I found this (2005-2016 rip). The Japanese version has more information, it’s linked. The production notes seem to be partially excerpted from that Film International article, with some changes. The translation is rough so it has been minimally edited for readability (by me). info about production companies:

Aroma Planning and Baroque (producers for Tamakichi Anaru) are a sub sect of V&R Planning (“visual & retail”). Some sources say Aroma and Baroque were directly involved with Tsurisaki’s films, but the site above only shows V&R Planning. Kaoru Adachi founded V&R for documentaries (1986, Tokyo) before transitioning to fetish porn. from his wikipedia-

Adachi didn’t know how to shoot films but was interested in “weird documentaries”, especially those involving death, so he just “shot documentaries the way he thought they should be.” V&R Planning, under the Mad Video label, distributed the Japanese versions of the first three videos in the ‘US Faces of Death’ series as Janku or ‘Junk’. Around 1989, Adachi along with Company Matsuo and a cameraman traveled to Brazil to film death scenes for Shin janku (“New Junk”), known in the US as Faces of Death 4, for which Adachi received co-director credit.

In fact only one scene filmed by Adachi &co. appears in the movie, the clip at the end that was made into a news reel. And it seems Adachi is not credited as a co-director. He edited the movie for US distributors and actually accepted credit under a pseudonym, lol. Susumu Saegusa (imdb). (Among his later works for V&R International is the June 2008 release A Fuckwork Orange: Return of Lasses in Hell (XV-065) which combines lesbian domination and humiliation, urination, cockroaches and maggots. ) V&R is still selling uncensored videos through V&R International in Brazil.

PRODUCTION NOTES by TSURISAKI KIYOTAKA

It was September 1995 when I met Froilan Orozco for the first time. I was introduced to Orozco by a Colombian photographer who specialized in the dead, Alvaro Fernandez Bonilla; he had recommended that i take photos of embalming. At first, I received an intense impression from Orozco’s smoldery features rather than embalming, and I became attracted to his nihilistic darkness, speech and behavior that was short and to the point with confidence in himself. If it is the corpse as it stays still, I would take still photos.

I thought Orozco was worth being filmed and I also wanted to make a film focused on him. In 1996 ‘V&R PLANNING’ the AV manufacturer that released ‘junk’ and ‘death file’ offered to hire me for some photoshoots for the new ‘death file’. And the first thing I did was take photos of Orozco. I paid him five hundred dollars for that photoshoot. At that point both Orozco and I thought we would work together only once.

Eventually the new ‘death file’ did not happen. The purge of cruel expression in Japan was progressing steadily. I never expected to see such an end of the century. However, I kept the coverage on Orozco without thinking of that situation. And every time I met him, unconsciously I was taking a video of him.

Orozco did not claim any additional fee against me. He was brusque and stoic like a martyr. What on earth was he thinking of me coming all the way from Japan just to film corpses? We didn’t have much conversation – I did not want to disturb Orozco, and I was left alone. I also liked the situation with comfortable distance. The relationship between us was somewhat strange.

Sometimes I wondered how long our relationship would last, but I never expected it would end suddenly with the death of Orozco himself in February 1998. His existence had such unparalleled influence on me. He died of a hernia. That means the weight of the 50 thousand bodies he embalmed crushed him. It was a vocational disease. Though it might sound cruel, it was the death in harness with honor.

Since the coverage was an unconscious and sensuous one, when I think back to it now I have many regrets. Was the making of the documentary inherently putting him into a corner? I was just there for him and I thought it might be important.

Once I asked him such a thing, 

“For example, is it possible to take a video of necrophilia?”
“1,500,000 pesos(1,500 dollars) including guarantee for the actor.”

That was an actual figure. 

“Just for reference, how about the snuff film?”

Orozco put on a grin and said, “huh, you got money? It costs a lot.”

Was he teasing me? The story that Orozco had once smuggled cocaine stuffed inside a corpse into America got reality and sounded true to me. Actually, during the heyday of the drug war, the incidents where cocaine was found in the corpse occurred frequently. The method of Stuffing cocaine into the corpse of a baby and a woman acting like mother carried it out was popular in smuggling.

Orozco also confessed such story when the camera was not running. Whether he inhabited the urban legend or not, I don’t have much interest in the truth. What I aim for is not a rough documentary, but a beautiful epic. Anyhow I brought up all numerous video footage into one to comeplete ‘OROZCO EL EMBALSAMADOR’ in 1999 and released it in theaters in summer of 2000.