A man named Kure Ichiro (Yoji Matsuda) wakes in an asylum with no memory and is told by Dr. Wakabayashi (Hideo Murota) and Dr. Masaki (Shijaku Katsura) that he’s blocking the past as he killed his bride on his wedding day. However, his treatment begins to confuse fantasy and reality, especially a manuscript called Dogra Magra.

Based on the novel by Kyusaku Yumeno and the last film of director Toshio Matsumoto, Dogra Magra is a movie that features a hospital filled with pickled punk babies in jars, doctors who try and convince a man that he’s a character in a novel, rotten corpses and a reality that may or may not be true. One of the doctors might now even be alive.

This is a film with no easy answers and maybe the best way to watch it is just to let it wash over you and try to figure it all out on the tenth rewatch.

Presented on blu ray for the first time outside of Japan, this Radiance Films release has a digital transfer supervised by director of photography Tatsuo Suzuki and producer Shuji Shibata. It also has commentary and an interview with director Toshio Matsumoto; a visual essay by programmer and curator Julian Ross; information on the Ahodara Sutra chant by legendary street performer Hiroshi Sakano; a trailer; a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Time Tomorrow; a limited edition booklet featuring new writing by Hirofumi Sakamoto, president of the Postwar Japan Moving Image Archive and author Jasper Sharp on screenwriter Atsushi Yamatoya, an interview with producer Shuji Shibata and Matsumoto’s director’s statement; and it’s all in a limited edition of 3000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings.

You can order this movie from MVD.