:964 Pinocchio

964 Pinocchio is a memory-wiped sex-slave cyborg who is disposed of by his owners for failure to maintain an erection. His modifications are unclear beyond having no memory of his past and being unable to communicate.

While wandering aimlessly through the city, he discovers Himiko, a homeless girl. Himiko has also been memory-wiped, possibly by the same company that "produced" Pinocchio, though she appears to be fully functional. Himiko spends her days drawing maps of the city, to aid other memory-wiped people.

She takes Pinocchio into her care and tries to teach him to speak. Meanwhile, Pinocchio's head director, accompanied by his female secretary who spits out cherries into a bowl which he eats from, plots to kill him as he commands three mercenaries to find him in the city. After much effort, he has a breakthrough and finally becomes aware of his situation. Himiko and Pinocchio kiss and become physically intimate, triggering something in both of them. Pinocchio's body erupts in an inexplicable metamorphosis and it becomes clear that his modifications were much more involved and esoteric than simple memory loss. Both undergo violent transformations involving huge amounts of blood, pus and vomit. Both of which cause their memories to return. In his transformation, Pinocchio violently shakes and convulses while gallons of blood and yellow pus coat his skin, eventually forming a massive wound-like cavity in the centre of Himikos home, with Pinocchio at its centre, unable to move. Himiko's transformation takes place in an underground train-station: After stomping through the station while aggressively gnashing her teeth, she keels over and begins to vomit. She returns home and watches Pinocchio before hallucinating and splashing acid on him.

Himiko then pretends to help Pinocchio post-metamorphosis, but soon betrays him; shackling him to a pyramidal concrete block and force-feeding him trash after accidentally splashing some on her. Later, she kept him back at her place, companied with one of the mercenaries. Upon finding Pinocchio, he contacts the head director who proceeds another mercenary to track the place to kill Himiko with a smoke gun, so he could finally have Pinocchio. Both mercenaries attempt to kill Himiko with the smoke gun, but she survives, kills one of them by scratching his face and activating the smoke gun on him. Pinocchio's memories then eventually return, Himiko tries to lunge at him but was unable to attack due to Pinocchio's ability before he escapes, running through the streets at high-speed as crowds of horrified onlookers watch on.

Meanwhile, both Himiko and the mercenary reached to the head director's place to tell him about Pinocchio's memories returning, much to his anger. The alarm was set off, indicating that Pinocchio is coming before the mercenary, the head director and his secretary grouped up in attempt to put an end on his destructive reign.

However, Pinocchio reaches to the factory outside, confronts the three after the head director shouts at him to die, charging at the three at high speed, chaining them together and running through the fields with them. Pinocchio then kills the head director by disembowelment and runs off, leaving behind both the horrified secretary and mercenary behind where she starts convulsing afterwards after the head director dies spilling out cherries from his gaping stomach and questions it. Shortly afterwards, while Pinocchio writhes in agony in a nearby field, Himiko finds him and demands Pinocchio's death, commanding him to "Die!" and "Explode!". Pinocchio asks her why she refuses to help him and she tears off her own face, revealing an enormous stone-like head that she was concealing underneath. In a blind rage, Pinocchio attacks her, hugging and then shortly after ripping off her head from her shoulders and placing it over his own before steam blows out of it. The film concludes as Pinocchio, now combined with Himiko’s voice, is later seen standing at the base of the Tokyo Tower at night seemingly relieved of his persistent agony and uttering, "Oh. This is much better. Everything is so clear. It feels so good!"

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• Haji Suzuki as Pinocchio, a memory wiped cyborg who was thrown out due to him having a erectile dysfunction. He later gets a metamorphosis before setting off in a rampage.
• Onn-chanUsed as a pseudonym for the actress in said-film. as Himiko, A homeless girl who takes care of Pinocchio and draws maps of the city to aid other memory-wiped people. She later experiences a metamorphosis, causing her to envision a past version of herself stabbing something. After this, she betrays Pinocchio.

964 Pinocchio was created on a low-budget using guerrilla-filmmaking techniques, with scenes in filmed in Tokyo utilizing reactions from real crowds of people.{{cite web|url=https://collider.com/964-pinocchio-most-distinctive-adaptation/|title='964 Pinocchio' Remains the Most Distinctive (and Disturbing) Adaptation of the Fairy-Tale Classic|date=2022-10-26|website=Collider|access-date=2023-06-09}} The team had to get permits for most of the scenes filmed on the streets. The famous scene of Pinocchio parting a crowd of people while running through Tokyo was shot in Shinjuku in a pedestrianised area. According to Fukui, it was one of the few scenes filmed in the city without a permit due to the crew being legally bound to shoot off the road.

After working on Tetsuo the Iron Man as an assistant director, Sogo Ishii insisted that Shozin would make a direct feature in-which after experiencing special effects to editing while working on Ishii's 1989 short film,The Master of Shiatsu, Shozin would finally have an idea for a story which would later become known to be 964 Pinocchio.{{Cite web |last=Dazed |date=2025-03-18 |title=964 Pinocchio: The story behind the 1991 cyberpunk fairytale |url=https://www.dazeddigital.com/film-tv/article/66384/1/964-pinocchio-story-cult-1991-cyberpunk-fairytale-japan-disney-shozin-fukui |access-date=2025-03-27 |website=Dazed |language=en}}

According to an interview on the 88 Films Blu-ray release with Shozin Fukui, the script was written while he was homeless.

The actress who played Himiko was initially just a crew member until she was cast a week before filming started. She is credited in the movie as Onn-chan, which was a pseudonym created for the film. 964 Pinocchio was the only movie she ever acted in.{{Cite web |title=Midnight Eye interview: Shozin Fukui |url=http://www.midnighteye.com/interviews/shozin-fukui/ |access-date=2023-10-31 |website=www.midnighteye.com}} The actor who played Pinocchio, Haji Suzuki, had a personal life with his parents being farmers, he had returned to his hometown, got married, and has since taken over the farm. Due to the limited budget, some improvisations had to be made during filming. Director Shozin Fukui stated in a 2007 interview which was included as a bonus feature in the DVD release of the film that they used an old wheelchair as a makeshift dolly. Both filming and editing took place over the span of 6 months each.{{cite web|url=https://horrornews.net/10319/film-review-964-pinocchio-1991/|title=Film Review: 964 Pinocchio (1991)|date=2010-08-09|website=HorrorNews.net|access-date=2023-06-09}} The smoke bombs used during film were quoted as "smelled very bad" and are difficult to control. Following the release of 964 Pinocchio, most of the actors quit all their involvement, indicating they felt that they had completed their performance.

To promote the film prior to its release, Fukui had flyers and posters put up at music venues, movie theatres, galleries, restaurants and event spaces, even spray-painting a car and drive it around the city.

Fukui has cited Blade Runner, Possession and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as big influences on his work.

The film was shown at the Rotterdam Film Festival, which Shozin never went despite the programmer seeing the film and had played it there. Shozin was also even given a photo of the audience at the festival during the screening.

Unearthed Films released the film on DVD in the United States in 2007.{{cite web|url=http://www.dvdempire.com/Exec/v4_item.asp?item_id=626245|title=964 Pinocchio|publisher=dvdempire.com|access-date=2011-04-08}}

The film was released in a single edition DVD and in the Cyberpunk Collection alongside Fukui's Rubber's Lover.{{cite web|url=http://www.dvdempire.com/Exec/v4_item.asp?item_id=1368470|title=Cyberpunk Collection (2 Pack)|publisher=dvdempire.com|access-date=2011-04-08}}

964 Pinocchio was re-issued for the first time on Blu-Ray on February 7, 2023, by Media Blasters, and again for March 24, 2025 by 88 Films, including a booklet essay by Mark Player, Fukui's earlier short films, Gerorisuto and Caterpillar, along with both a filmed introduction from Stephen Thrower, a new interview with Fukui along with the aforementioned 2007 interview.{{Cite web |date=2024-12-11 |title=Paranoid android on the loose! 88 Films announces cyberpunk-horror film '964 Pinocchio' on Blu-ray in March {{!}} cityonfire.com |url=https://cityonfire.com/964-pinocchio-blu-ray-88-films-screams-of-blasphemy/ |access-date=2024-12-14 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241211221125/https://cityonfire.com/964-pinocchio-blu-ray-88-films-screams-of-blasphemy/ |archive-date=11 December 2024 }}

A ScreenAnarchy review stated, "964 Pinocchio is meticulously tailored to weigh on its audience. ... You're sure to be completely exhausted when the end credits finally grace the screen ... the constant presence of screaming, yelling, grunting and whining bears its own unique sense of torture", comparing it to films like Tetsuo: The Iron Man and Electric Dragon 80.000 V.{{cite web |first=Niels |last=Matthijs |url=https://screenanarchy.com/2012/03/review-964-pinocchio-personal-favorites-88.html |title=Review: 964 PINOCCHIO (Personal Favorites #88) |date=2 March 2012 |website=ScreenAnarchy |access-date=26 January 2025}}

A 2022 retrospective article by Collider described it as "an uncommon and unparalleled riff on the timeless fairy-tale".

{{Reflist}}

• {{IMDb title|0225009|964 Pinocchio}}
• {{Rotten Tomatoes|pinocchio_964}}
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20160302132054/http://www.horrordrome.com/movie/964-pinocchio-1991 964 Pinocchio] at Horrordrome
• {{cite web |url=http://www.jmdb.ne.jp/1991/do001940.htm|title=ピノキオ ［ルート］９６４ (Pinokio［Ruuto］ 964)|access-date=2007-07-19|language=ja|publisher=Japanese Movie Database| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20070830083912/http://www.jmdb.ne.jp/1991/do001940.htm| archive-date= 30 August 2007 | url-status= live}}

Category:1991 films

Category:1991 horror films

Category:1991 science fiction films

Category:1990s science fiction horror films

Category:Cyberpunk films

Category:Films about cyborgs

Category:Films directed by Shozin Fukui

Category:Films set in the future

Category:Films shot in Tokyo

Category:1990s Japanese-language films

Category:Japanese science fiction horror films

Category:1990s Japanese films