Dis­cov­er the beast­ly plea­sures of this Japan­ese were­wolf romp

“A demon?” asks a griz­zled cop as he skims through a coroner’s report. ​“It’s the only pos­si­bil­i­ty,” responds his part­ner. ​“A human being wouldn’t be able to slash a body like that – and not in such a short time either.”

In this film (full title Wolf Guy: Incensed Were­wolf, or Uru­fu Gai: Moero ôka­mi-otoko) from ​’70s B‑movie sen­sei Kazuhiko Yam­aguchi, the super­nat­ur­al casu­al­ly coex­ists along­side the world­ly on Tokyo’s mean streets. Kiyoshi Hama­mu­ra, the vic­tim of the hor­ri­fy­ing assault that the police are dis­cussing, died in the arms of Aki­ra Inuga­mi (played by Street Fight­er and Yam­aguchi reg­u­lar Shin’ichi ​“Son­ny” Chi­ba) in the film’s open­ing sequence, mak­ing Aki­ra – who just hap­pened to be on the scene – a key sus­pect in the mys­te­ri­ous murder.

“Wher­ev­er you go, there’s always some inci­dent,” com­ments one of the police­men, with unin­tend­ed irony. Unbe­knownst to the police, inves­tiga­tive reporter Aki­ra Inuga­mi is him­self a lycan­thrope and the epony­mous ​‘wolf guy’, whose teen years had already been chron­i­cled in Shōji Matsumoto’s 1973 live-action fea­ture Hor­ror of the Wolf – to which Yamaguchi’s film is a loose and unof­fi­cial sequel. So it is one almight­i­ly uncan­ny coin­ci­dence that Aki­ra should be the only per­son present when Kiyoshi is ripped to shreds by a tiger that mate­ri­alis­es out of thin air, car­ry­ing out the kind of bes­tial attack of which Aki­ra him­self is more than capable.

So begins Akira’s inves­ti­ga­tion into this bizarre killing, which takes him through a demi-monde of rape-hap­py rock musi­cians, street-lev­el yakuza, crim­i­nal exec­u­tives, cor­rupt politi­cians and pow­er-hun­gry secret gov­ern­ment agents – until even­tu­al­ly he finds mur­der­ess-by-proxy Miki Oga­ta, a young singer and fall­en inno­cent who is as much vic­tim as mon­ster. After hav­ing been gang raped, infect­ed with syphilis and addict­ed to hero­in, all for the mis­take of falling in love with an ambi­tious politician’s son, Miki is now prey to her own deep-seat­ed grudge against her tor­men­tors, which embod­ies itself in the form of a venge­ful big cat and attacks wher­ev­er she is pointed.

A con­fronta­tion with Aki­ra seems inevitable, but Wolf Guy reserves all its sym­pa­thy for Aki­ra and Miki, both a lot less mon­strous than the human char­ac­ters who vic­timise, oppress, abuse, exploit, tor­ture and hunt them. Aki­ra is a lady killer only in the metaphor­i­cal sense, his ani­mal mag­net­ism attract­ing the love of every woman he meets. He has kick-ass karate skills, but uses them only against bul­lies, crim­i­nals and killers. He may be a car­niv­o­rous crea­ture (con­spic­u­ous­ly push­ing aside the veg­eta­bles on his plate in a restau­rant, while hun­gri­ly devour­ing the steak), but he is also with­out ques­tion the hero of the piece, while all those who wish to cap­ture, con­trol or destroy him are the villains.

It may per­haps have been bud­getary con­sid­er­a­tions that led Yam­aguchi and his screen­writer Fumio Kōna­mi to omit entire­ly from their sce­nario the kind of hairy trans­for­ma­tions that typ­i­fy oth­er were­wolf flicks, but that deci­sion also removes from our pro­tag­o­nist the great­est sig­ni­fi­er of a werewolf’s mon­strous­ness. For as the moon gets fuller, Aki­ra mere­ly gains pow­ers of rapid heal­ing and even invul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, mak­ing him more akin to a super­hero than a crea­ture of the night. Moral­ly, that is also where he’s at, striv­ing in vain to find a place among mor­tals before even­tu­al­ly turn­ing his back on them – and bid­ding, in the final frame, a farewell to arms – out of dis­gust at humanity’s inhumanity.

Aki­ra is a lone wolf, both lit­er­al­ly and metaphor­i­cal­ly. As he strug­gles to live with­in a soci­ety that con­stant­ly rejects him, he becomes an appeal­ing sym­bol of alien­ation and resis­tance, no doubt reflect­ing the feel­ings of the mar­gin­alised, mis­fit male audi­ences who sought out such films in Japan­ese cin­e­mas. Aki­ra also trav­els through a vari­ety of gen­res and ​’70s ​‘scenes’, all to the accom­pa­ni­ment of a killer psych-funk sound­track. The result is some­thing wild – a hybrid film which refus­es to demonise its freaks.

Wolf Guy is released by Arrow on Dual For­mat Blu-ray/D­VD on 22 May, 2017.