ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Randy Victor Ian helps cover the Japanese roman porno beat for B&S About Movies.
Horror meets roman porno in director Noboru Tanaka’s The Watcher in the Attic, an adaptation of a short story written by Edogawa Ranpo AKA Edogawa Rampo, often described as “the Edgar Allan Poe of Japan” as evidenced by that pen name (his real name was Tarō Hirai). Voyeurism is the name of the game, until murders start occurring.
Lady Minako (Junko Miyashita) owns a boarding house in 1920s Tokyo. Goda (Renji Ishibashi), one of her tenants, has a series of holes in the attic from which he spies on her and other residents, including sexual trysts with a man dressed as a clown. Lady Minako sees Goda peeping through one of the holes and begins acting out for him. This being an excellent example of the ero guru (“erotic grotesqueness”) genre, sex eventually isn’t enough for the two main characters, and events must escalate to death.
Plenty of perversion is in store, from the aforementioned peeping to more bizarre fare such as Lady Minako’s chauffeur placing himself inside a chair to feel her naked skin, and beyond. The Watcher in the Attic is a wild slice of decadent cinema — and just wait until you get a load of the ending! This newly restored version looks and sounds great.
The Watcher in the Attic premiered on VOD, all leading digital platforms and Film Movement Plus on August 28, 2026.
