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TOP KNOT DETECTIVE DEBUTS AT HORROR CHANNEL FRIGHTFEST

There's nothing quite like a well-done mockumentary, and if advance opinion on Top Knot Detective is to be believed it's not only well-done, but completely nails the fascination with western TV channels showing bizarre, imported Asian TV shows. The brainchild of cult-movie nerds Aaron McCann and Dominic Pearce, they describe their project, "Growing up in the 90’s in Australia exposed us to some of the weirdest cinema around. Not only did late night curated “movie shows” display the foreign classics that critics the world over would come to rely upon as touchstones of the golden age of cinema, but it also showed us strange cult films, television shows and animations from all over the world, those images would stay with us for a lifetime and form the basis of what would later become Top Knot Detective.

top knot detective directors

The idea came to us as a throwback to the era of cinema we used to see on [Australian multi-cultural TV channel] SBS. It was a look back at an old Japanese series that had crossed the shores and been badly dubbed into English by a team of Australian who changed the plot as they went about piecing together the narrative from old master tapes that came without subtitles. However, this (like so many other possible story arcs) fell by the wayside as we journeyed into a yearlong discovery process of Japanese cinema, Japanese entertainment and the lure of Japanese celebrity. After careful consideration (and more than its fair share of redrafts) we decided to tell the story in Japanese, even though neither of us to speak or write in a language other than English.

After months of casting we shot a test, which ended up being used as a pilot for SBS to showcase what we were hoping to achieve: a documentary looking back at a once famous TV series that aired only once on the same station we adored back in 1992… but it was all a lie; the original series never existed, the news articles were all fabricated and we were attempting to pull off a FORGOTTEN SILVER (1995) for Japanese samurai cinema."

Synopsis:

In the early 90's, a little known Japanese Samurai/Detective series hit Australia where it quickly became a cult hit. In Japan it was called Ronin Suiri Tentai (translation: ‘Deductive Reasoning Ronin’) but in Australia it was affectionately known as Top Knot Detective. Created by Aaron McCann and Dominic Pearce as a throwback to the films and TV shows that were broadcast on SBS in the 90s, this “documentary” tells the story of director/star: Takashi Takamoto, who couldn’t act, fight or write a TV show, but through various underworld connections, had the means to turn himself into a superstar - or so he thought.

Top Knot Detective Links: Official Website | Facebook | Twitter

Top Knot Detective receives its London cinema debut at the Prince Charles Cinema on the 28th of August 2017. For tickets go to: http://www.frightfest.co.uk/tickets.html

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Daniel Benson
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/horrordna
UK Editor
Fuelled mostly by coffee and a pathological desire to rid the world of bad grammar, Daniel has found his calling by picking holes in other people's work. In the rare instances he's not editing, he's usually breaking things in the site's back end.
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