Suicide Club (film)
Suicide Club, known in Japan as Suicide Circle (自殺サークル, Jisatsu Sākuru) is a 2002 Japanese independent horror film written and directed by Sion Sono. The film explores a wave of seemingly unconnected suicides that strikes Japan and the efforts of the police to determine the reasons behind the strange behavior.
Suicide Club gained a considerable amount of notoriety in film festivals around the world for its controversial subject matter and gory presentation. It has developed a significant cult following, and won the Jury Prize for "Most Ground-Breaking Film" at the Fantasia Film Festival.
Plot
The film takes place over a time period spanning six days, with footage from a fictional pop group "Dessart" opening the movie and closing during the credits.
In Tokyo on May 27, 54 teenage schoolgirls commit mass suicide by throwing themselves in front of an oncoming train. Shortly after, at a hospital, two nurses commit suicide by jumping out of a window. At both locations rolls of flesh are found, with the missing skin matching removed flesh on corpses. Three detectives — Kuroda (Ryô Ishibashi), Shibusawa (Masatoshi Nagase), and Murata (Akaji Maro) — are notified by a hacker named Kiyoko (Yoko Kamon) of a link between the suicides and a website that shows the number of suicides as red and white circles.
Suicide Club
Suicide Club commonly refers to:
Suicide Club (secret society)
The Suicide Club was a secret society in San Francisco credited as the first modern extreme urban exploration society, and also known for anarchic group pranks. Despite the name the club was not actually about suicide.
History
The club was founded by Gary Warne and three friends: Adrienne Burk, David Warren, and Nancy Prussia. It began in Spring 1977 as a course that Warne taught at the Communiversity in San Francisco, part of the Free School Movement, and it lasted until shortly before Warne's death in 1983. Events generally started and ended in Warne's used paperback bookstore, Circus of the Soul.
The name of the Suicide Club was inspired by three stories written by Robert Louis Stevenson, where men who want to die belong to a club, where each evening one of them is randomly selected for death. The name belied the gentle albeit zany nature of its members, who had a predilection towards light-hearted practical jokes.
Activities
Membership in the San Francisco Suicide Club was attained by attending an "initiation" ceremony that took place sporadically. Any member could propose any type of event, and it would be listed along with a writeup in the Club's monthly mailer, sardonically named the "Nooseletter." There were five or so general categories that most events fell into:
Podcasts:
