Ol’ FATHER GEEK has returned to his normal self again after my sociological side trip of a couple of days ago and I’m here to file a report on THE JAPANESE OUTLAW MASTERS. If you read a story I did a few weeks ago on Film Noir you are aware that Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre (one of the country’s most historic) at 6712 Hollywood Blvd. (about 4 blocks west of Cahuenga) in downtown tinseltown is holding a series of really cooool film fests. Well, May 6-16th they will be hosting a fantastic collection of Japanese motion pictures that scrupulously erupted onto Japan’s movie screens between 1960 and the budding 1970’s. This period gave rise to some of the most superlative genre filmmaking the world has ever had the pleasure to witness; a portentous cinemascopic kaleidoscope of lunatic yakuza shockers, samurai swashbucklers, and bargain-basement sexploitation. Excluded from the lists of well-established archetypal Japanese cinema and buried deep in eastern catacombs of forgotten film most of these jewels have remained lost to fans on our shores. NO LONGER! Thanks to the Japan Foundation a honest-to-god treasure-trove of demented action from the minds of directors Seijun Suzuki, Shunya Ito, Yasuzo Masumura, Kihachi Okamoto, Kazuo Ikahiro, Kanji Misumi, Norifumi Suzuki, and others has found it’s way out of the darkness and into the flickering light of the Egyptian’s silver screen. Many of these magical masterpieces will be having their U.S. premieres at this long overdue festival and most are not available on video, laser disc, or DVD. If you liked LONEWOLF AND CUB, if you crave more films like SWORD OF DOOM and SEVEN SAMURAI, if you love American films like EASY RIDER, GUN CRAZY, CAGED HEAT, or even AUSTIN POWERS then this is a film festival you dare not miss. You’ve got time to make plans. Take an early vacation, hop a jet and get your butt to this event of a lifetime. Bring your best bud, your main squeeze, and/or your teenaged kids with you. They will all thank you, so much so your ego may never fully recover. You will be changed, re-newed, re-born to a different view of life, love and adventure. FATHER GEEK guarantees it!
The fun begins Thursday May 6th at 7pm with a U.S. premiere, a mint 35mm print of the extraordinary surrealistic exploitation masterwork 1972’s FEMALE CONVICT “SCORPION” JAILHOUSE 41. Action-goddess Melko Kaji is Scorpion the legendary inmate of jailhouse 41 in this transcendental masterpiece adapted from manga comics by director Shunya Ito. She leads a prison break and begins a journey through barren mountains, joyless forests, and a scorched, half-buried hamlet pursued constantly by bestial prison guards. This is violent 70’s cinema at it’s invigorating best. Following that at 9:15 pm will be the chiaroscuro atmospherics and clandestine rendezvous of MISSION: IRON CASTLE (1970) by the acclaimed director Kazuo Mori. This treacherous ninja spy movie smacks of film noir and is filled with midnight deceptions and betrayals. There’s an immoral warlord, kidnapping, paranormal killers, a patrician young lady, assassinated family and of course an unassailable fortress. What else could you possibly want?
May 7th starts off at 9pm with one of FATHER GEEK’s favorite Japanese directors, Seijun Suzuki and his erotic chef d’oeuvre GATE OF FLESH from 1964. It’s a story of life in the dog-eat-dog domain of vanquished Tokyo after World War II. We follow 4 prostitutes as they descend into a social milieu of satanic barbarism. Joe Shishido (the Japanese Bogart) plays a veteran with an annoying habit of killing U.S. Occupation troops. It is a devastating tale of post-war underwold crime and punishment told by a true master. That is followed up by another U.S. premiere film, hardcore action connoisseur Kinji Fukasaku’s WOLVES, PIGS, AND PEOPLE. This 1964 yakuza motion picture features Ken Takakura as a lone-wolf hoodlum that turns on his yakuza clan in glorious noir style bringing tragedy to his family and all envolved,
May 8th gets an early start at 6:30pm with the 1966 flirting hit women a-go-go gangster/spy tongue-in-cheek burlesque BLACK TIGHT KILLERS. (Mike Myers eat your heart out) Director Yasuharu Hasebe’s extraordinary clique of pussycat assassins use wads of bubblegum and scalpel-sharp 45rpm records to carryout their assignments. This will mark the 1st American screening of this talented filmmaker’s premiere production. At 8:30pm things get serious, deadly serious at the old Egyptian. 1962’s intense HARA KIRI (Seppuku) by legendary director Masaki Kobayashi fills the screen with the skirmish between feudal ethos and compassion in the Japanese mind’s eye. Master composer Toru Takemitsu weaves a scarily strident score thru the ruthless twists and turns to a splintering climatic use of the samurai code of honor in this film that uses tense dark drama as meditation.
Sunday the 9th gets on the way at 4pm with perhaps the greatest of all yakuza films Masashiro Shinoda’s 1962 standout hit PALE FLOWER with titillation pursuing Marlko Kaga, who looks like some convoluted caricature of Audrey Hepburn. Takemitsu turns in another amazing score as we are led on a lightning fast tour of Tokyo’s seedy underworld of gaming dens and passionless murderers. At 6:15 pm a unbalanced, unseeing sculptor kidnaps an artist model (Mako Midori) in 1969’s BLIND BEAST. Master director Yasuzo Masumura chisels a memorial of erotic terror in a bucolic depository of horror as we are led through a maze of immense female body parts that is as wicked as it is demented. Just tooo weirdly cooool!
We pick up again on Friday the 14th at 7pm for the start of Shintaro Katsu night. The 1st feature is Yasuzo Masumura’s famous anti-war epic HOODLUM SOLDIER, a kinetic black comedy of the WWII Manchurian front. At once irreverent and sadistic it is punctuated by perverse violence and razor-sharp comedy as Katsu is lead into moments of jaw-dropping mayhem. 9:15 sees the start of a blind swordsman double feature with 1964’s FIGHT ZATO ICHI FIGHT!!! See Katsu at his superstar best as he hacks his way thru a gauntlet bounty hunters with a baby in his arms. The wandering ronin blends the pathos of Chaplin with the hardedged authority of Clint Eastwood in this the 3rd year of the Ichi series. ZATO ICHI AND THE CHEST OF GOLD is next. Also from 64 this time he is pitted against LONE WOLF AND CUB’s Tomisaburo Wakayama as a sadistic whip wielding villain in this breathless cliffhanger. Be prepared for a climax with one of the most dynamic, nerve wracking duels in the history of film making.
Saturday starts real early with THE WANDERERS (1973) at 4pm. This Toho film of yakuza youths is a bleakly hilarious film that strips away any code of honor. It is followed at 6:30 by HIRUKO, THE GOBLIN a hallucinatory horror film from 1991. Shinya Tsukamoto directed this dream-like horror film that deals with the gate to hell, blue-skinned ghosts and deamon hunting. At 8:30 JAILHOUSE 41 repeats followed by SCHOOL OF THE HOLY BEASTS from 1974. Sexploitation guru Norifumi Suzuki plunges us into a maelstrom of hidden torture, blasphemous rites and masochistic desires. He pushes us thru a gauntlet of rose-thorns in this shocking masterpiece which will also be shown at 7pm on the 7th.
May 16 marks the end of our Japanese culture tour with 5pm’s 1966 classic RED ANGEL by Yasuzo Masumura. Set in the field hospitals of the Manchuran front this is no MASH. It is real front-line horror and this is the 1st time it has shown in America. Frank and disillusioning it is a beautiful picture of a not too pretty scene. The festival ends on a bang with 1965’s SAMURAI ASSASSIN starring the great Toshiro Mifune. Director Kihachi Okamoto and writer Shinobu Hashimoto offer up one of the most perverse twist endings in the history of Japanese cinema in this fever-pitched massacre in the snow. Brillant film, beautifully executed start to finish. Hope to see you there. FATHER GEEK signing off for now.
