Cruel Ghost Legend / Curse of the Blood / Kaidan zankoku monogatari (1968)

For Japanese movies, YouTube is like the bargain bin at a really great video store, where you can sweep up all kinds of things you never knew existed because they are so cheap. Eventually, you throw most of them out, but among the armful you pick up will be a gem or two. Cruel Ghost …

The Pornographers (1966)

The Pornographers is a film about pornography without any. While there is plenty of sex as subject matter, it is always screened or off-stage, and there is almost no nudity of any kind. In a way, this is Imamura’s extension of The Insect Woman, now converted into an Insect Man, trying to make a living …

Cash Calls Hell / Gohiki no shinshi (1966)

Cash Calls Hell had slipped to the bottom of my stack because I expected a standard yakuza movie that might be of interest only because of the presence of Tatsuya Nakadai. What instead emerged was one of the great film noirs from any country. It has a Japanese cast and a Japanese setting, but otherwise, …

The Wife of Seishu Hanaoka / Hanaoka Seishu no tsuma (1967)

Seishu Hanaoka was the first person to develop a functioning general anesthetic that allowed him to do serious operations, but since he did this in 1804 Japan, his work was not known in the rest of the world, where the first general anesthetic was long credited to an American doctor in the 1840s. As such, …

Rise Against the Sword / Abare Goemon (1966)

There was something about a return to black and white that seemed to stimulate, even revive, many Japanese film makers in the sixties. This is certainly true of Inagaki’s Rise Against the Sword. For the last decade of his career, Inagaki spent most of his time on color period epics, several running four hours, which …

Setsuko Hara

I only recently realized that I had missed the centennial of Setsuko Hara's birth (6/17/1920)  which would have been a good time to make a few comments about her career. I must preface this by saying, as with everything in my blog, these are the views of an outsider, and I know I am an …

Warring Clans / Sengoku yaro (1963)

Like so many Japanese jidai-geki, Warring Clans just drops us into the action with the barest minimum of exposition, which means there is a lot to sort out as the movie progresses. It also resolves plot lines with the barest minimum of explanation, so you have to keep on your toes. Fortunately, it is also …

Cave of the Vampire Bats / Hatamoto taikutsu otoko: Nazo no nanairo goten (1961)

Utaemon Ichikawa began his Bored Hatamoto series in 1930, so it is the longest running of all the Japanese film series featuring a single actor, lasting longer than Zatoichi or Tora-San, though Tora-san had more films and, counting the TV series, Shintaro Katsu played Zatoichi in more individual titles. Thus, it provides us with the …

Love for an Idiot / Love of a Friend / Chijin no ai (1967)

When Tanizaki began publishing Chijin no ai in 1924, it became a sensation that was something like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise. Though its “modern girl” Naomi was not a ‘flapper' in the American sense, the depiction of her western ways and sexual freedom both scandalized and titillated readers. Though the story seems …