I first “met” Doug Tilley when he contacted me for an e-mail interview about my own long-ago crap movie, Forever Evil. He’s a nice guy, talented writer. Does a couple of podcasts in addition to his No Budget Nightmares feature on Daily Grindhouse.
I should have paid more attention to my story tropes, because guys like Doug are the ones who stab you in the back during climactic battles, or unknowingly cause the Apocalypse. This begins innocently enough with an entry on the aforementioned column, on a movie I had never heard of before: Science Crazed.
“You have never, ever seen anything like SCIENCE CRAZED. I promise you.”
Reading Doug’s review again, it is like the circular narrations I wrote about last week, where the first time you hear the narration, you have nothing to hang on the words, but when it’s repeated at the end, the narration becomes heavy with meaning. There have been other mentions of Science Crazed from Doug on Twitter and Facebook. Enough that I was finally curious enough to track down a copy. Like The Necronomicon, there are no copies available to the general public, and for a damned good reason. And like a doomed character in an H.P. Lovecraft story, I tracked it down anyway.
We will pause now while I stare emptily into space for a few moments, shuddering.
I have watched many, many bad movies in the course of my life. I had thought that I had hit the lowest with Sorority House Vampires From Hell, but I was proven wrong when Joe made me watch Things for my first Daily Grindhouse podcast. This, surely, was it – but the Universe keeps finding ways to prove me wrong.
Okay, the first thing you are going to notice about Science Crazed is that it’s shot on video. I’m okay with this. The second thing you are going to notice is that everybody is dubbed. Okay, I can handle that. They are dubbed poorly, which is a little harder to take. And even though they are dubbed, the room tone still changes from shot to shot. Here, allow me to demonstrate, with the movie’s opening:
You will notice something else, here. Although the intention was to overdub everyone, writer/director/super auteur Ron Switzer apparently told everyone to pause for a few seconds before saying their lines so the echo of his voice calling “ACTION!” could die away. But, in order to pad his movie out to the required 80 minutes for a feature, he left these pauses in. I could reduce the running time by about fifteen minutes just by cutting out those pauses. More on padding in a moment. First we should address what plot can actually be found:
Dr. Frank straps a woman to a chair and gives her an injection that he promises will cause her to give birth to a baby in 24 hours. Strangely, she is okay with this. She writhes in the chair while screams are dubbed in. The next morning, Frank and his assistants come in (science is not something that needs to be observed, I guess), to find her corpse and a baby on the floor. Frank instructs his assistants to wrap the baby’s head in gauze, which makes as much sense as anything else so far.
In the matter of a few hours, the baby has grown into a strapping adult gauze-faced Fiend, who kills Frank and proceeds to wander the endless halls of the Shelley Institute, looking for victims. The Shelley Institute has an pretty unusual variety of facilities, and a bunch of people doing a variety of things in these facilities, most of them unexplained. None of them know a Fiend is coming, although the thing sounds like a lion with a sinus infection snoring in a cardboard box.
Let’s look at the first major segment, which is going to bring us back to the truly diseased amount of padding in this movie: There are two women exercising in one of the Institute’s many odd rooms. The Fiend stalks the halls, drawing closer. We think he’s drawing closer. He could be moving away from them, for all the clues the camerawork and editing give us. The women continue to exercise. No, wait, it’s not so much that they continue to exercise as the same damned footage is repeated over and over again until the segment is ten goddamn minutes long. Switzer took his tape recorder to a gym to record a real workout session, which means there are far more people on the soundtrack than there are in the exercise room.
Doug Tilley, possibly in an attempt to warn the world, possibly in an act of contrition, posted this entire sequence to YouTube. Go ahead, I dare you:
Some build-up, huh? Some monster attack, huh?
Now consider the excruciating volcanic hell of nearly an hour and a half of this.
There is a blonde in a room doing something with a microphone, maybe? Switzer is quite proud of the swirling camerawork he did around her because he repeats it five or six times while someone bangs on a Casio keyboard. Interspersed with hallway shots, of course.
The two assistants do call in a cop (he’s browsing in a local video store) who looks like a high school senior giving his impression of what a loose cannon cop must be like – I haven’t seen a prop gun so misused since Plan 9 From Outer Space. Apparently all the other cops have the weekend off, so he and the two assistants split up to look for the Fiend.
The Shelley Institute also has an indoor swimming pool which has some sort of party going on in the middle of the night. Science Crazed has its educational aspects, as we discover that ladies in Canada wear high heels and sunglasses to indoor pools. The Fiend takes exception to this, drowns one woman who obligingly swims up to him, and shuffles off.
One of the last of the people in the Shelley Institute to fall to the Fiend’s strolling rampage is a woman making a list of countries in which to test nerve gas, That she composes her list so slowly is a droll bit of self-parody in this movie, so I assume it’s in there by mistake.
This is a movie shot in slow motion that has absolutely no slow motion in it. Unless you count the scene where the worthless cop dies, and I think he’s supposed to be crumpling to the ground in slow motion, but is really only moving very slowly.
I’ve also seen movies that get confused between daytime and nighttime, but I’ve never seen that in a movie happening indoors. There are plenty of times that the Fiend walks into a fully-lit room, only to have the next scene happen in a spotlight in a dark room. I’d say it’s an artistic conceit, but the rest of the movie argues against any artistry whatsoever.
Incidentally, the Fiend can dodge bullets, but it can’t dodge a machete. Go figure.
The movie ends with the supposedly dead Fiend’s eye opening and a promise of a sequel, which results in my traditional send-off to really bad movies: “Oh, fuck you!”
Science Crazed is apparently on YouTube in its entirety. You can find it yourself, if you’re so inclined. I refuse to have that stain on my karma.
I’m a lifelong Texan. This is due to a lot of factors, not the least of which is my tendency toward inertia. Financial, business, all my friends are here, all my family is here… it ain’t the climate that keeps me around. I hate being hot. I hate being hot in a steambath, which is a fair description of summers around here. I would have split for parts with a more temperate-to-frigid tradition, except for… you know. Then again, I’d have to admit I’d be spending my time bitching about shoveling the sidewalk.
So we had an Arctic Event here last Friday , by which I mean No One Cares. At All. There were icicles on my mailbox. There was ice on my car, and more importantly, there was some ice on roadways. Nothing compared to what our Northern friends were experiencing, but when you live in a swamp, you do not build an igloo; we simply do not have the infrastructure for such weather. It was uncommon for these parts, but I still sort of feel there was a general overreaction. School districts and colleges shut down, which was my work day shot right there (in fact, the next day, when all this stuff had melted and it was sweater weather at best, I went to the campus and it was still locked down). My regular Friday night show was cancelled too, and when I stopped counting the money this enforced day off was costing me, I decided to have a little mini-film-festival, so I could pretend I was up in Chicago, at B-Fest, without all the shouting and slowly growing body funk.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Before the Frost Giants came to visit, I made use of a night off to watch Messiah of Evil, an oddity from 1973 . In it, a young lady named Arletty (Marianna Hill) goes to an insular seaside California town to find her missing artist father (who will turn out, eventually, to be Royal Dano). The townspeople are spectacularly unhelpful, if not downright hostile. She finds her father’s journal, which chronicles his apparent descent into madness – apparent except for the fact that Arletty’s experience begins to mirror his. She is joined by peripatetic curiosity seeker Thom (Michael Greer, better known as a comedian) and his two female (and somewhat mysterious) traveling companions (Anitra Ford and Joy Bang).
There is some mythology hanging around in the background about a Dark Preacher who passed through the community 100 years before, and walked into the ocean with a promise to return in, yes, a hundred years. Packs of townspeople spend the night on the beach, keeping warm with bonfires, doing nothing but staring out to the ocean, waiting. And when the moon turns red, the whole town turns into Night of the Living Dead. Well, we’re told that it’s when the moon turns red, but we see anti-social flesh-eating behavior from the townsfolk on regular nights, too.
Eventually our Scooby Gang is whittled down to just Thom and Arletty – and Arletty has already confronted her supposedly dead father, and is pretty far down the same path he was on – bleeding from the eyes (a sure sign of trouble in the town), inability to feel pain, general insanity. They try to escape hordes of violent townsfolk apparently come to eat them, but then…
…the movie runs out of money.
In the extras of Code Red DVD‘s superb presentation of Messiah of Evil, co-writers and co-directors Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck talk about schlepping the mostly completed movie around LA, trying to get the money to finish it, and meeting with general disdain. Finally the legal squabbles between investors were settled, and they surrendered the work print, which was hurriedly completed, probably with existing footage, and released. The story gets, shall we say, rather rushed there at the end. A common enough story in Hollywoodland.
And that, oddly enough, works in favor of the movie. There’s already a Lovecraftian air to the proceedings, and what Huyck and Katz didn’t get to shoot – the rest of the backstory, explaining the Dark Preacher and what nefarious outcome he hoped to accomplish with all this flesh-eating and Blood Moon stuff – that goes unexplained. And inexplicable circumstances is the tentpole of Lovecraft-style horror.
Here in the hyper-cynical ‘teens of a new century, it’s easier to appreciate the general tone of Messiah of Evil. My first reaction was that it was Lovecraft by way of Lynch through Argento’s sensibilities. Arletty’s encounters with the townspeople, and Thom and his mini-harem, the father’s beach house with its disorienting murals, all feel distinctly Lynchian; witness Arletty’s first encounter with Thom & Co., when a motel door opens to reveal none other than a disheveled Elisha Cook, Jr. relating a horror story of local events, apparently directly to her (it’s to Thom and his tape recorder).
The way in which the plot unfolds, the camerawork, the reliance on narration, the dreamlike interactions between people, the lighting… it all feels positively European, and given the supernatural events, my mind drifts to Argento’s Suspiria, except without such a saturated color pallet. Hearing Huyck and Katz talk about their admiration for French film and their attempts to emulate it in the disc’s extras made me feel better – at least I got the continent right.
The cast they assembled is also surprisingly solid for the limited budget, and has plenty of genre clout. Royal Dano and Elisha Cook, Jr. require no introduction, and were probably there for a day each, at most. Marianna Hill has a varied resume, reaching from The Traveling Executioner, Blood Beach and Schizoid all the way to Godfather Part II. Anitra Ford’s career is pretty much centered in the 70s, where she was mainly known as a model on The Price is Right, but pervert that I am, I mainly know her from The Big Bird Cage. Joy Bang – who always looked 14, no matter how old she really was (and she’s about 26 or 27 here) is probably best known for Night of the Cobra Woman, and she called it quits on her acting career soon after this movie.
(Another odd note is… oh, ahem, SPOILERALERT …when Joy’s character buys it, she’s in a movie theater that slowly fills up with zombified townspeople, a chillingly effective scene. Though the movie she’s watching is supposed to be Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, it’s actually Gone With the West, also known as Little Moon and Jud McGraw, which stars Sammy Davis Jr., James Caan and Stefanie Powers. That couldn’t have been cheap to license. It also has a release year of 1975, so I have no earthly idea of what the hell is going on here, appropriately enough.)
(Future me jumps in to mention that is probably a trailer for Gone With the West, as trailers do not have such complex licensing problems. But man, Messiah would have you believe it’s an amazingly long trailer!)
Messiah of Evil was a genuine surprise to me. Incomplete, but fairly unique in its approach and subject matter. The sequences involving Ford and Bang’s fatal encounters with the townspeople are very good, especially for a low-budget movie from a first-time director. You start wondering what Willard Huyck did afterwards. Unfortunately, the answer to that is Howard the Duck.
(That was cheap and mean and the easy way out. Huyck and Katz also wrote American Graffiti and wrote and directed French Postcards, which I thought was a pretty good movie.)
So then, what am I to think when the first of our Arctic Events hits (I’m typing this during the second one) and I start my little mini-fest with Let’s Scare Jessica to Death?
This movie wasn’t what I expected; that title gives you the impression a plot is afoot, and it is not (oh, yeah, spoiler alert again). Jessica (Zohra Lampert) has only recently been released from a mental institution. Her husband Duncan (Barton Heyman), a concert cellist, has sunk all his money into an old house with an attached apple orchard, intending to become a gentleman farmer and using this idyllic life to help his wife recuperate. Their friend Woody (Kevin O’Connor) comes along for the ride. They find Emily (Mariclare Costello) a red-headed hippie chick squatting in the house, and seeing how attracted Woody is to her, they wind up asking her to stay.
If you’re thinking that the townspeople are going to be stand-offish if not downright hostile, you’re right. They all seem to be wearing bandages or nursing woundsof some sort. Duncan and Jessica find a fellow transplant, an antique dealer originally from New York, (Alan Manson), who’s willing to tell them about their new home and its unfortunate history, how one of the girls drowned in the lake and now haunts the woods as “a vampire or something”. There’s some spooky girl haunting the woods alright, and Jessica keeps seeing something in the lake, beckoning to her under the surface. Then she notices that in an old photo of the previous occupants found in the attic (that was sold to the antique dealer but somehow crops back up) one of the daughters looks a lot like Emily…
One of the best things about Let’s Scare Jessica to Death is that the movie keeps the viewer just as off-kilter as the title character, often unsure of what is actually happening or even what just happened. The actual reality of events is always in question, and the fact that almost all of the events happen during broad daylight, a direct violation of everything that is held dear and traditional in a horror movie, just makes everything that much more disorienting. This is also another movie where the sound design is an uncredited cast member, adding to the viewer’s growing unease.
Lampert is phenomenal as Jessica, walking a razor’s edge of panic and brittle bravery in the face of her recent “sickness” and resultant unreliability. Mariclare Costello, as the vampire-or-something Emily, also walks a tightrope of intentions; we’re never quite sure what she’s all about until the third act. Both women went on to lengthy acting careers deservedly so. The men, unfortunately, are just there to be manipulated, which is another reason this movie stands out in the horror field: the women do all the heavy lifting. The men are there mainly to be culled.
(I should also indulge in another of my annoying asides to mention that the main actors deserve extra props just for getting into that lake over and over again, especially with all the nice pans over that gorgeous Connecticut fall foliage, all bright red and yellow… it’s late Fall, and that water must be freezing.)
Writer/Director John D. Hancock has an enormous set of brass gonads for even attempting to make a horror movie that unspools in the daylight, and he earns them by largely succeeding. When most people discuss him, they point to his later movie Prancer, but for my money his best movie is Weeds (which he also wrote), starring Nick Nolte.
The juxtaposition of these two movies so close together in my experience was so jarring because in many ways they are so similar: both open and close in a circular fashion, with the main character in isolation, narrating. This snippet of prose is repeated at the end, and of course, the second instance has a much heavier meaning due to what has transpired in the previous 90 minutes. Both women are insane. Both have to deal with bizarre, cultish townspeople. And both are bedeviled by things lurking in a nearby body of water.
Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, when it was re-released by Warner Archive, was touted as a Lovecraftian tale, which I don’t see at all: it is Lovecraftian only in that the events are never fully explained, outside of Emily being “a vampire or something”. Messiah is the more genuinely Lovecraftian of the two, with its unknown and unknowable mythology lurking around the periphery in the land of unshot footage. Jessica is more a ghost story with teeth (perhaps literally), if not a sheer examination of the horror of a decaying mind, like Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Messiah is like Shadow Over Innsmouth re-imagined after a viewing of Night of the Living Dead.
Jessica precedes Messiah by a good two years, minus whatever time it took for Messiah’s finances to get ironed out and the movie released in its unfortunately incomplete form. Did one inspire the other? I can’t say; the common elements are such sturdy pieces of storytelling boilerplate that I can’t really judge. Sometimes the disparate pieces of a tale, floating around in the collective ether, fly together on their own, and two or more similar stories are crafted. Witness Dredd and The Raid: Redemption for a more recent example.
But there is one thing for sure: they are both good, if odd, horror stories, well worth watching. Though I should also mention that both are going to be pretty much dismissed by the modern horror fan, with their deliberate pacing and lack of gouts of blood – Jessica moreso than Messiah.
I’ve been watching the movies contained in the Criterion Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman box for over a month now; it’s odd to consider that I’m nearing the end of them – only seven to go. Then, of course, I have managed to track down five of the six collections of the TV series put out by Tokyo Shock around 2008 – and does anybody have any earthly idea why the second volume of that now commands upward of $150? Also saving my pennies for the out-of-print disc TS put out of Zatoichi: Darkness is His Ally, Shintaro Katsu’s 1989 swan song to the character. So I will continue to be Ichi-fied for some time.
Meanwhile, still moving through the 60s pictures:
Samaritan Zatoichi (1968)
For someone who could give Daredevil a run for his money, Ichi really does have some of the worst timing ever. To pay for his hospitality, a disagreeable yakuza Boss sends Ichi along with a party of six thugs to force a ne’er-do-well to cough up the thirty ryo he owes. When the target douses the lantern in his hovel and sends the sighted yakuza bleeding out into the night, Ichi has to step in – after all, darkness makes no difference to him – and though Ichi explains matters to him, the guy still insists on attacking, with the usual fatal result. This occurs just as the man’s sister appears with the money to pay his debt.
That’s bad enough, but then the Boss’ regulars announce they’re also taking the woman prisoner as interest on the debt, which is when Ichi steps in. Turns out the entire thing was an elaborate scheme to press the woman into service to the local corrupt magistrate, so the Boss would get a lucrative concession at a new palace, or something. Ichi tells the Boss that ain’t happening, kills a thug who called him a “blind bastard” once too often, and then takes it upon himself to get the girl, Osode (Yoshiko Mita) safely to her aunt in a nearby town. Osode is, shall we say, conflicted about receiving help from the man who killed her brother, but the Boss’ men are still following her, and there is a troublesome ronin (Makoto Sato, a popular action star in his own right), who has eyes on Osode, and also on a huge bounty on Ichi’s head. Osode keeps sneaking off from Ichi’s care, only to find herself captured once more, and at one point Ichi, desperate to catch up with her, basically steals a horse to cover ground more quickly – then realizes he has absolutely no idea how to stop a horse.
Comic actor Takuya Fujioka, a friend of Katsu’s, plays Shinsuke, another peripatetic yakuza who is something of a bungler, but in whom Ichi still finds a staunch ally. Once more Kenji Misumi directs a splendid action picture, full of gorgeous natural vistas and nicely choreographed sword fights. I’m a bit dismayed at Ichi actually cheating at dice, and at least one instance of questionable physics, but overall Misumi once again delivers a fine Zatoichi movie, and if the traditionally complex plot is absent, at least this time Ichi isn’t bleeding to death as he walks off into the sunset. I worry about him, you know.
Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo (1970)
And here we are, the first Zatoichi movie I ever watched, some 25 years ago or so. It was fairly available back in the days of the first VHS wave, largely due to the name recognition factor of Toshiro Mifune and Yojimbo. I frequented a video store back then that had an amazing catalog of foreign movies. (Also cheapass straight-to-video horror movies, but that is a story for another time.)
This was a collaboration between Katsu Productions and Toho. The previous movie, Samaritan Zatoichi, had been released almost two years before, a telling gap when previously, Daiei had been releasing three a year for some time. It is also the longest of the Zatoichi movies at nearly two hours, when others had run just short of 90 minutes. All these factors serve to make this a rather novel entry in the series; but the major component setting this movie apart remains the presence of Toshiro Mifune, and the concurrent doubling of star power, for better or worse.
The movie opens with a nightmarish scene, a marsh during a rainstorm, where everybody out in the storm is preying upon everybody else. Ichi breaks his sword dealing with one attacker, and becomes overcome with homesickness. He returns to his home village for the first time in three years; he delights in the familiar sound of a stream, not seeing the dead bodies rotting in its waters. He bypasses a bizarre improvised graveyard unaware of the rough carvings of monks serving as tombstones. Things have changed in the last three years. The village has been taken over by the rich merchant Eboshiya (Osamu Takizawa), and a rival gang formed by his son, the hyperactive Masagoro (Masakane Yonekura), who relies, both for muscle and for strategy, on his bodyguard, Sassa (Mifune). When Sassa isn’t drunk or making time with local prostitute Umeno (Ayako Wakao), he’s egging Masagoro on about a bar of gold the Boss is certain his father is hiding somewhere. There is some skullduggery afoot regarding gold there, but it’s not what one would suspect.
You may have noticed that I didn’t mention Ichi in that last paragraph. He is there, but seems almost a guest star in his own movie. The necessity of devoting screen time to Mifune and developing his character is what adds the extra time to the movie. Despite what many people insist, although Mifune is playing a yojimbo, a bodyguard, he is not playing Sanjuro, the subject of two Kurosawa movies. Really, Sanjuro was far too similar to Zatoichi to be used in this story – a rough and tumble traveler who altruistically did the right thing and protected the weak against the worst elements of a corrupt world. The character of Sassa is not quite so complex, but has his secrets – and some of those secrets run counter to Sanjuro’s character.
Eboshiya eventually brings in another bodyguard, Kuzuryu (a properly cadaverous Shin Akida), who turns out to be the sort of villain Sassa pretends to be, while still having a surprising connection to the yojimbo. As with all other Zatoichi flicks, the threads come together in the end, but unlike most of them, the loose ends just sort of flail together in a mass instead of the usual tidy bundle.
Both Katsu and Mifune could be legendary troublemakers on the set, and a legend about the two disagreeing about who would win the final duel persists, but seems wildly unlikely. Would Mifune really think he would be allowed to end a successful series, 20 entries long? I kind of doubt that, but I could also see Katsu and Mifune pranking the world with the idea. Good publicity, too. The revisiting of Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo at this remove did give me one insight, into why I never bothered before to seriously look into the series, even when Animeigo released the series domestically back in the early part of the century. Again, it’s due to the presence of Mifune and the necessary focus put on his character. I find I don’t care much for Ichi’s character in this outing, outside of a few outstanding comedic bits, and that is the impression I carried with me for the next twenty-five years or so.
Zatoichi Goes to the Fire Festival (1970)
This is the first film in the series where star Shintaro Katsu has a co-writing credit, and I wish I were clever enough to ascertain exactly where his contributions lie. I’m tempted to say it’s some of the more outrageous comedy bits, but that’s just guesswork on my part.
Ichi rescues a woman from a “mistress auction” (earlier translations called it a “geisha auction”), who had been “wife to a retainer of the Shogun”. That night, she steals Ichi’s wallet, and runs into a moody samurai who she recognizes – and says not a word as he kills her. Turns out this ronin (played by Tatsuya Nakadai, sixteen times more intense and crazy than his role in Sword of Doom) was the lady’s husband, and he’s determined to kill everybody she ever slept with – and that includes Ichi, although he’s innocent.
But that, my friends, is mere subplot. Ichi’s real problem is the yakuza Superboss Yamikubo (Masayuki Mori), who has united all the gangs in the region under his control – and is, himself, blind. Yamikubo is aware of what a nuisance this Zatoichi chap can be, and when an ambush in a bathhouse fails (probably nerve-wracking to shoot, even with blunt swords and all that exposed man-flesh), the Superboss reveals why he holds that high position. He rightly feels that throwing more knives at Ichi isn’t going to work, and takes the opposite tack: he sends the daughter of his right hand man, the lovely Okiyo (Reiko Ohara) to get close enough to kill our favorite masseur. Though Ichi is charmed by the young lady, Okiyo (of course) falls in love with Ichi, his lack of guile and his decency. This will lead up to Yamikubo’s ultimate death trap (of which the title is an ironic clue) and the final showdown between two blind adversaries – not to mention that troublesome and now completely insane ronin, who shows up when Ichi is about to drown in yakuza, announces “No one kills this man but me,” and proceeds to turn into a combination of Lone Wolf and a threshing machine.
Kenji Misumi is back in the director’s chair for this one, and though the movie betrays its 1970 origins with a number of Eurocine snap-zooms and close-ups through telephoto lenses, Misumi’s visual flair and penchant for truly lovely natural vistas to set his scenes against is stronger than ever. Outstanding in the comedy department is a really odd scene with a man and a woman running a roadside tea stand who bicker more than the Kramdens, but with the added appeal of flying kicks. I wanted to see more of them, but it’s probably best that Katsu obeys the laws of showbiz, and leaves me wanting more. There is another, stranger character in wannabe yakuza and amateur pimp Umeji (played by transgender actor Peter, likely best known to American audiences for his role in Ran), an androgynous youth who looks like an anime character. At one point, he attempts to seduce Ichi and assassinate him. It’s played for laughs, but I’m still trying to parse if my discomfort with that scene is due to my sexual orientation or that it’s played for laughs. I may never figure that out.
So here I am, four movies out – not counting TV series and swan song – and I’m feeling more and more of a need to take a break from Ichi. This may only be a matter of a week or so. Maybe a little longer. But we’ll come back to this glorious box and finish it out, sooner rather than later.
I’m in the bizarre, unenviable position of having too much to do, yet not being able to do any of it. I’m waiting on too many phone calls or e-mails to be returned, I have a teleconference coming up in two hours, which would be an okay space to pop in a movie but I’d feel like I was cramming it into that space, like a book slapped on top of other books on a shelf just to get it out of the way. That’s a bulky, cumbersome analogy, but I’m also operating on short sleep rations, so that’s all I’ve got.
So I might as well just ramble on here.
At the end of the year there was another “streamageddon” panic when a bunch of movies got cleared off Netflix Instant. Cooler heads attempted to prevail, some pointing out that licensing arrangements usually began or ended at the, yes, beginning or end of the month, and we seem to go through this at least twice a year when a bunch of licenses expire. A lot of the movies come back, some don’t.
Link that to something I see at least once a day on Twitter: “What? Why isn’t (Caddyshack/1941/insert name of movie) on Netflix?”
Then tell me again how physical media is dying.
Well, I’m going to admit that you have a point there, at least, but I think it’s largely because certain people want it to die, not because of any need or essential evolution of entertainment.
Up to roughly a hundred years ago, if you wanted to hear Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, you had to go to a concert hall where it was being performed. If you didn’t live within easy traveling distance of one, or they were playing Mozart that evening, well, tough. No glorious Ludwig Van for you. The invention of the gramophone mitigated that somewhat, though admittedly the scratchy wax cylinder was a poor substitute for a symphony orchestra in the same room as the listener. New technology would work toward closing that gap in experience and quality.
Then again, sometimes you don’t want any Ludwig Van.
I was struck at one point last year by a critic talking about seeing The Seventh Seal at an art house in the late 50s, then having to wait years for the opportunity to see it a second time. To a modern film buff, that sort of experience is almost unthinkable. My copy of Seventh Seal is not ten feet from my desk. I can watch it again any time I want.
Yet, this is the same experience one gets from streaming media services. Am I somehow to believe this is better?
Ooooh dear.
Netflix cannot provide access to every movie everyone might like to see at any imaginable point at any time; that is simply impossible, so they of necessity attempt to maintain the most commercially viable mix they can. I’ve seen my fair share of odd, non-commercial movies on Netflix, so I can’t complain too loudly – but it still can’t beat a large collection curated by myself, for myself.
Where streaming does beat that, I will admit, is in the realm of clutter. I sit here typing this, surrounded by stacks of books and movies. If they ever, like in some EC comic book or episode of Twilight Zone decided to turn on me, I’m doomed, hopelessly outnumbered. The huge stacks of Marvel Essentials and DC Showcase Presents have already tried to end me twice. This, however, is the choice I made: movies I want to watch, books I want to read. There is some point I am going to require a viewing of Evil Roy Slade, some point where discovering the exact issue of Teen Titans the Mad Mod first appeared will be paramount. This is how I shape my world, and move about in it.
The general move toward streaming and that intellectual construct they call “The Cloud” is a move toward licensing content rather than selling it. I have somewhere around twenty books on my Kindle, and Amazon has proven they can rescind my access to any of these books at any time. I didn’t buy them, I only rented them, apparently. There is no such muddiness of ownership with a physical book. I have exchanged money for an item, which I can now deal with as I see fit; I can keep it, resell it, give it away, use it to level out an uneven table, or – heaven forbid – burn it.
Physical media is not, I think, truly going away, at least not in my lifetime. I’ve been hearing the death knell tolled for DVDs for quite some time, and the only real evidence I’ve seen there is the vanishing of Blockbuster and Hollywood Video stores. But that’s been the death of a mode of business, not the medium – they could not keep up with the one-two blow of streaming and Redbox kiosks, which offer, once more, convenience at the cost of choice.
If you’re a film buff, if you’re a collector, the realm of physical media is still quite robust. The last year or two has seen enormous growth in boutique labels catering to those markets. Warner Archive and its highly successful Made on Demand discs of vault movies, largely ignored in any realm except Turner Classic Movies (until they launched their own streaming service). Outfits like Vinegar Syndrome, Grindhouse Releasing, Code Red, Severin, Scream Factory and old friends like Blue Underground and Synapse, all producing niche product of outstanding quality.
So basically: streaming has a place on my buffet, but until A) their inventories truly proliferate, and B) I no longer have to pay an arm and a leg for broadband internet so I can enjoy such services at the same consistent level of quality as physical media – it’s going to stay at that subsidiary steam table with the egg rolls and the fried bread, while I’m concentrate on the entrees of the main table.
I know it may not seem like it, but I actually did watch some movies in the last month which did not feature a blind guy with a cane sword. Allow me to demonstrate:
It took me far too long to get around to the talkie version of The Unholy Three (1930). Jack Conway directs the sound version of the Tod Browning silent thriller from 1925 featuring three denizens from a circus sideshow, on the run from the law, who embellish their life of crime with secret identities. Echo the ventriloquist (Lon Chaney) masquerades as a sweet old woman who runs a pet store. Hercules the strong man (Ivan Linow) is her “son-in-law”, and a psychotic midget (Harry Earles, later much more sympathetic in Freaks) his infant son. The pickpocket Rosie (Lila Lee) is along for the ride as Echo’s granddaughter, but she’s falling for the pet store’s clerk, the square Hector (Elliott Nugent).
Their scam is pretty elaborate: Rich people come in to buy talking birds from Granny, but it’s Echo’s skills that give them voice (in the silent, this was cleverly presented with onscreen word balloons!). when the birds turn mute in their new homes, Granny pays a visit to examine them, with Earles along in a baby carriage. Left alone, the fake baby can case the joint for later burglary.
Things go south when Earles and Hercules rob a place on their own (while Echo as Granny tries to bust up the Rosie/Hector romance) and the two bunglers wind up murdering their victim. They quickly frame Hector for the crime, then take it on the lam to a remote cabin while Hector faces the music. This doesn’t go over too well with Rosie, though, who convinces Echo to go to the trial as Granny to clear Hector, leaving Earles and Hercules on their own to plot against the absent Echo.
There are at least two crackerjack sequences of extreme suspense in this version worthy of Hitchcock. The major emotion you’re left with, though, is an understandable yearning to see Lon Chaney’s Dracula. This is his only talkie, and he gets to show off every conceivable emotion; being alternately menacing and comical, even sympathetic at the end. It’s a good swan song, but serves to prove exactly what we lost with his untimely death, at a mere 47 years of age. Man, fuck cancer.
Just before the Christmas holidays, a direct download of Josh Johnson’s VHS documentary Rewind This! was made available for like 8 bucks, so I went hey, sure, and made with the Paypalling. Johnson casts a broad net, starting with collectors, then flashing back to the origins of the format, the format wars with Betamax, the rise of video stores, the role of pornography and the medium’s eventual downfall. But it always returns to collectors, who are the only reason, really, that we are even talking about VHS anymore. There are a few areas where I wish he had spent a bit more time, and some where I think he spent too much time (the section on video auteur Dave “The Rock” Stevens seems to go on indefinitely – but then, I also have to admit that he is the most animated of the interviewees). On the other hand, finding out that Cassandra “Elvira” Peterson is truly One Of Us is gratifying, and the guy with a Screams of a Winter Night poster on his wall made me smile. Warm nostalgia just flows over the whole endeavor. Well worth a watch.
I wish I could give as unhesitating a recommendation to Solomon Kane, based on the character of the same name created by Robert E. Howard, whom most of you will recognize as Conan the Barbarian’s daddy. Kane is usually described as “a dour Puritan” by Howard, and is a sword slinger literally worlds away from the Cimmerian. What Michael J. Barrett has done here is provide an origin story for the character that Howard never bothered to provide. It’s exciting enough, it’s undeniably well-made, but it’s also about a half-hour too long, and emotionally unengaging. James Purefoy as Kane requires some warming up to, but sadly, never quite manages that warming. It’s always good to see Pete Postelthwaite and Alice Krige, even if they are written out of the story pretty swiftly. And oh, look, it’s Max von Sydow, for whom ditto. Still, it’s good enough to hazard a glance if you’re interested. I didn’t hate it.
Worthy of far more than a mere glance is Fritz Lang’s The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933). I admit I cheated on this one – I really should have started with the earlier, silent Dr. Mabuse The Gambler (1922), but I picked the movie pretty late, and The Gambler is close to four hours long, and Testament is a mere two hours. Lang wasn’t interested in making short movies. In fact, the Criterion DVD has an interesting supplement tracing the differences between the original German version, and the French and eventual dubbed American versions, what was cut out and the likely reasons for same.
Testament has a marvelous opening as a man skulks around the supply room of a counterfeiting operation so massive the printing presses shake the walls. This guy will attempt to alert Police Inspector Lohmann (Otto Wernicke) of the operation, but the stress of constant attempts on his life drive him mad. Equally mad is our old pal Dr. Mabuse (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) who has been catatonic for years since the events of The Gambler, but has recently taken to silently, sedulously scribbling in notebook after notebook intricately plotted plans for an Empire of Crime based on terroristic acts.
Some shadowy somebody is using these notes to carry out Mabuse’s plans utilizing a highly organized network of criminal cells. A member of the counterfeiting cell, Kent (Gustav Diessl) balks at the shadowy figure’s insistence on murder, and along with His love Lilli (Wera Liessem), he finds himself in a deathtrap with a hidden timebomb when he tries to go to the police. The ultimate identity of the faux Mabuse is never in doubt, but at least half the fun is in watching the characters get there.
The best thing for a film fan is the realization that the grouchy Inspector Lohmann is a carryover from Lang’s earlier M (1931), which means that M and the Mabuse movies happen in the same universe. Lang’s rich portrayal of the various denizens of Mabuse’s underworld bears this out. Someone on the IMDb pointed out that any director would be proud to point to Testament as their crowning achievement, but for Lang, it was basically Tuesday night. It was also his last movie in his native Germany, as the Nazi party was coming to power, and apparently saw things in Mabuse’s Empire of Crime that looked too familiar…
Next up was Jamaa Fanaka’s final movie, Street Wars, which proved to be a very entertaining puzzle. I watched it for the Daily Grindhouse podcast, which should be dropping at about the same time I finish this column up, so go to that link and be stunned by my inarticulateness.
I had put off seeing Street Wars for ten years or so… long story… so the best way to follow it up was to watch another movie with an insane title that I had been putting off (but only for a year), and there it was on Netflix: Kill ‘Em All.
Basically, there are eight assassins (though only four are deemed vital enough to give Bond-style introductory vignettes), who are drugged and abducted by a Cabal of Assassins and placed in a locked room deemed The Killing Chamber. There, they are supposed to take each other on in a series of one-on-one fights to the death, until only one remains standing.
If you are thinking, “That sounds like a rickety device to make a movie that is simply fight after fight,” congratulations, you too have seen way too many of these movies. If you like martial arts fights, though, this movie is pure catnip, and it is smart enough to stage an escape from the Killing Chamber midway through so our remaining assassins can get some payback. The one unfortunate note is when our filmmakers cannot resist making one character say, “This sounds like a video game,” because that is basically what Kill ‘Em All is: the best video game movie ever made that was never a video game.
It also gives us a pre-stroke Gordon Liu as the head of the Cabal, still able to kick a generous quantity of ass at 58 years of age. Kill ‘Em All is definitely not for all markets, but chances are you already knew that, and you already knew if you were interested or not the moment you saw the title.
It was with little or no conscious irony that I followed that up with the acclaimed 2012 documentary The Act of Killing. After a military coup in Indonesia in 1965, there was a genocidal spree of around a million executions of “Communists, ethnic Chinese and intellectuals”. The death squads were recruited from the ranks of criminals and paramilitary outfits; the difference here, from other countries where such atrocities have taken place, is that these people were never even accused of war crimes – they are successful and even revered today.
Director Josh Oppenheimer focuses largely on one of these men – Anwar Congo, the most prolific executioner of his city, with somewhere around a thousand deaths to his personal credit, and several of his former associates. They were “Movie ticket gangsters”, selling cinema tickets on the black market, before their promotion to masters of life and death.
At first The Act of Killing seems to be a treatise on the banality of evil, with Congo nonchalantly describing how he developed a speedy way to kill his charges with a wire noose. Chilling, but I’ve seen several such documentaries over the last few years. Oppenheimer realizes this, and instead gives these former movie ticket gangsters – twisted film fans, who saw themselves as the characters of American gangster movies – carte blanche to make their own movie versions of their careers, in whatever genre they please. And they leap at the chance.
The bizarre nature of their choices builds fascination for the film’s second act. There is the expected film noir interrogation scenes (with some stunningly unexpected method acting from a victim), but there are truly bizarre scenes of gory horror and even surreal musical numbers.
It is during the restaging of one brutal massacre and burning of a village that we begin to see the awakenings of conscience in the formerly unrepentant Congo: “I didn’t realize it would look so horrible.” This carries through to one of the interrogation and execution scenes with Congo playing the victim, and finding that “I can’t do this a second time.” Watching the final, edited version of that scene, he finally breaks down in tears.
The emotional devastation in The Act of Killing thus comes from an entirely unexpected direction, from a man who spends most of the movie informing people that the name “gangster” means “free man”, and who feels his greatest achievement is a musical number where a man removes a wire noose from his neck and then hangs a medal on Congo, saying, “Thank you for executing me and sending me to heaven.”
The Act of Killing is already been hailed as an important movie. I realize not everyone is going to seek it out, but honestly, they should. There is a great deal of honesty here, and a major lesson in how history is, indeed, written by the winners, even if the winners are in drag.
The New Year has begun, work is ramping up again. The Criterion Zatoichi box set is designed to facilitate binge watching, but I know myself too well: familiarity can breed contempt, so I started leavening my Zatoichi-watching with other movies. We’ll get to those later; for now, here’s my latest Zatoichi watches:
Zatoichi the Outlaw (1967)
Right at the front, there it is, an announcement that this is the first movie by “Katsu Productions”. Star Shintaro Katsu had so much success with this series that he formed his own production company, which would continue on after the failure of Daiei, even producing two other popular series, Hanzo the Razor and Lone Wolf and Cub.
Outlaw is a pretty definite attempt to establish there’s been a change in management. As ever, Ichi manages to stumble into a conflict between two yakuza gangs. One, led once more by veteran heavy Tatsuo Endo, is using crooked dice games to bilk drought-stricken farmers of their money and, eventually, their land. The other, led by Boss Asagoro (Rentaro Mikuni), is more in line with what Ichi considers classic yakuza philosophy: live on the shadowy side of life, but look after the common man where you can. Endo is in league with the corrupt Inspector General Suga (Ko Nishimura), and continues to attempt to draw Asagoro into a war. To circumvent this, Ichi assassinates Endo, then goes on the lam for a year to escape the wrath of Suga.
This is unusual enough; usually the death of the bad Boss is at the end of the movie, and Ichi walks off into a gorgeous sunset, the entire story taking up maybe a week of subjective time. This time, though, we find Ichi keeping a low profile, falling in with a massage service filled with louts and fools, until word reaches the service that he is a wanted criminal, and Ichi hits the road once again, only to find out that in the interim, Sugo has made Asagoro the local constable, and the once-noble yakuza chief has fully gone over to the Dark Side.
An intriguing character throughout this is Shusui Ohara (Mizuho Suzuki), a fallen samurai who refuses to carry a sword. He is teaching the farmers about things like crop rotation and organizing into communes – let’s face it, he’s a socialist, and non-violent, to boot; another person who lays a guilt trip on Ichi for his swordplay. Fearing the growing popularity of this community organizer, Suga and Asagoro arrest him and accuse him of being an Imperialist, which is an executable crime under the shogunate.
So after his final showdown with the traitorous Asagoro (and it is thanks to Rentaro Mikuni’s talent and this new production regime’s sensibilities that we’re kept guessing as to Asagoro’s true intentions until the bitter, bloody end), Ichi must still rescue Ohara, giving the movie its most indelible image: the organized farmers carrying the wounded Ichi on a wooden panel in an enforced march through the countryside to intercept the transport carrying him to his death. Because the villagers, at least, realize that only Ichi has the skills to save their savior. True to form, after he is released, Ohara says, “So, you spilled blood on the land after all.” To which Ichi replies, “Yeah, but the land needs you,” and then, probably tired of this hippie bullshit, limps off, the farmers yelling their thanks but not offering him as much as a band-aid.
The Outlaw is the most political Zatoichi movie yet, and that lends it a philosophical complexity that oddly, I find I almost resent. It also shows Ichi at his most fallible, and there is only so much of the harm he causes in this story that can undone by more harm. I am apparently a simple, brutish lout who likes his stories black and white; more likely, Katsu had been thinking for some time that it was time for his franchise to grow up and deal with some of the ramifications of the avenging angel act. He’d tried to do this with Zatoichi’s Pilgrimage, but was outvoted by the studio heads at Daiei. Now his own boss, he could plumb the additional depths the series required to continue successfully.
Zatoichi Challenged (1967)
Once again, Ichi finds himself saddled with a child, and is determined to return him to his distant father. This time, though, the boy is six years old, and something of a brat.
With his usual impeccable timing, Ichi shares a room at a crowded inn with a dying woman, and promises to take her son to his father, an artist who lives in another village. First the two fall in with a traveling troupe of actors, an odd interlude that serves mainly, it seems, to spotlight the vocals of one of the actresses. This light diversion serves, at the very least, to introduce the fact that a local yakuza Boss named Gonzo (quiet, Thompson fans) is forcibly taking over the territory of the nicer Boss who’s been hosting the actors for years. The troupe’s troubles with Gonzo also serve to reintroduce a mysterious samurai from the prelude of the movie, Akazuka (Jushiro Konoe), whose wanderings will intersect Ichi’s with greater frequency.
Ichi tracks the artist, Shokichi, to a potter, where he was serving as an apprentice until he vanished a year before. The potter mutters about him hanging around Gonzo’s gambling dens before his disappearance, and thus detective Ichi goes to work, with a surprising amount of that work accomplished thanks to an impromptu massage appointment.
Ichi finds out what we’ve known for a while: Shokichi is a prisoner at Gonzo’s compound, and is being forced to design pornographic images for dishes and pottery that will be fired with gold and silver and sold to wealthy lords – a practice which was punishable under shogunate law by death. Akazuka is working as a government agent, and his orders are to kill everyone involved with this scheme, including the unfortunate artist. When Akazuka refuses to yield to Ichi’s pleas for mercy on the artist’s part, the two engage in one of the best fights in the series thus far. Superbly choreographed in a gentle snowfall, Akazuka proves himself a worthy opponent by lasting against Ichi longer than anybody else. In fact, at one point, Akazuka has won… but realizes that Ichi was willing to die for the artist, puts away his sword, and walks away into the snow, leaving a trail of his own blood.
This is the movie that the Rutger Hauer movie Blind Fury was based upon, with, of course, the pornographic crockery replaced by designer drugs. The presence of the child is probably what caused to the filmmakers to think this could be a commercially viable concept. In truth, the child is more a plot device than anything, and is so annoying we wonder why Ichi gets so attached to him. I don’t even recall Blind Fury getting a theatrical release (apparently it did, but not a wide one). It was largely shot in Houston, and my pal, the late Red Mitchell, had a small role as a Neo-Nazi thug who got zatoichied by Hauer, but he was cut from the final version. All I got out of the production was Tex Cobb threatening my life because I couldn’t roll a joint for him fast enough.
But back to Zatoichi. My man Kenji Misumi is at the helm again, and it shows in slow, purposeful unveiling of the plot. His skills kind of fail, though, to make that brat likable. Maybe that’s just me.
Zatoichi and the Fugitives (1968)
The Zatoichi theme song, introduced midway through Zatoichi the Outlaw, with vocals by Katsu himself, is now fully-formed – as does seem to be the new production regime’s mission statement, which is to take the title character and put him through seven kinds of hell. See how much damage he can take, and still kill everybody in the end.
The fugitives of the title are a band of sociopathic thieves who are murdering their way across the countryside, one step ahead of the law. Two of their number make the mistake of trying to take advantage of a blind man eating rice balls by the side of the road. Since that man is Ichi, they’re both going to die quickly once their swords come out (one with a hypertensive geyser of blood that presages Shogun Assassin). This is witnessed by Oaki (the devastatingly cute Yumiko Nogawa), the female hanger-on of the bandits, ensuring that the rest of the gang will be gunning for a blind man. One of them literally – his specialty is a pistol.
Ichi is going to cross paths with these fugitives several times, and pass up the opportunity to cut them to pieces several times. This speaks to his growing distaste for using his deadlier skills – he prefers to use his reputation to scare the local Boss into releasing an ailing girl from her indentured servitude – but he will pay dearly for that charity, as will several others. The Boss-turned-corrupt-official will use the gang to slaughter the village headman and his family, then Ichi will be severely wounded by the gun-packing bandit.
Ichi has, meantime, taken up with the local doctor (the always welcome Takashi Shimura), a genuinely good man with a surprising link to the band of fugitives. The Boss takes the doctor and his daughter prisoner, hoping to force them to reveal where the wounded Ichi is recuperating. He might as well have signed his own death warrant, as the half-dead blind man is limping his way to the compound in a driving rainstorm to rescue his friends, resulting in one of the greatest reveals in action cinema: a bloody, soaked Ichi stepping out of the darkness and telling the Boss in a sepulchral tone, “I have returned from Hell for you.”
This is one of the darkest Ichi stories yet; it’s a general darkness that seems to have flowed through world cinema in that troubled time. By the final scene, Ichi has done precisely what he had to in order to survive, but he senses that this very act has rendered him an outcast from the very people he has been trying to save. Bleeding, exhausted, he limps into the night, and that melancholy theme song plays again. It’s a surprisingly downbeat denouement, the bitter fruits of this harvest. A similar ending was attempted in Zatoichi the Outlaw, but it is far more successful here. It resonates perfectly with Ichi’s growing discomfort with his role as avenging angel, and just feels remarkably complete, if that makes any sense.
If the series had to end anywhere, this would have made a perfect stopping point. Fortunately, I don’t get to make that call, and still have seven movies in the set to watch.
It’s inevitable in the course of 25 movies that I would hit one that I found less than impressive, and with The Doomed Man I hit that particular wall. The movie begins with Ichi being caned for “illegal gambling”. In a flashback to his jail cell the previous evening, we see the man in the next cell telling Ichi that the officials do this every so often just to make an example. This man, however, is Shimazo (Koichi Mizuhara), a yakuza second-in-command who was running a simple errand for his Boss, but who was arrested the second he hit town, accused of crimes – including murder – he did not commit. He begs Ichi to tell his Boss what has transpired, so his name can be cleared and his life spared.
Ichi, however, has a moment of clarity on the road and realizes that every time he does something like this, he winds up in trouble. After winning big in an archery contest, Ichi finds himself in the company of a “mendicant monk” (read: con man) played by comic actor Kanbi Fujiyama, and events seem to guide him to the same village Shimazo begged him to visit. Not the least of which is that the monk has a new con: pretending he is Zatoichi, getting exorbitant fees from desperate minor yakuza bosses, running up a bar tab, and splitting town.
This is the most straightforward Zatoichi plot yet, and for some reason that makes me feel cheated. Half the fun of previous entries was watching the convoluted relationships eventually come together as Ichi assembled information; here, it’s pretty much given that the two Bosses involved are at fault for Shimazo’s plight and one interrogation later, Ichi has the letter that will save his life. Under these circumstances, the subplot with the monk seems like mere filler, although it has one of the better set pieces, when a group of killers seeking Zatoichi descend on the fake one.
It’s also not a Zatoichi movie without that massive final fight, and Doomed Man makes up for any shortcomings with a ton of murderers trying to stop Ichi from delivering his letter on the fog-enshrouded docks of a fishing village. That and some beautiful scenic photography raise this movie above the average, and it is really only because of the extraordinary quality of the movies preceding it that I would condemn a movie for merely being average.
Zatoichi and The Chess Expert (1965)
The twelfth movie is a return to form, as the plot is so intricate the last set of characters isn’t even introduced until halfway through the movie.
At this point Ichi is trying very hard to kill only as a last resort, illustrated by the opening sequence where he is attacked by five yakuza and he only wounds them, content to let them retreat. Of course, that also means they’ll still be pursuing him through the picture, but so be it. Ichi then makes the acquaintance of a wandering ronin obsessed by dai shoji, often called “Japanese chess”. Ichi likes the game, too, and the ronin, Jumonji (Mikio Narita) is impressed by the blind man’s ability to play without seeing the board. The two wind up traveling together, and Jumonji begins playing the game blindfolded, to even the match.
Ichi is also running the same scam he used at the very beginning of Tale of Zatoichi to bilk large sums of money from dishonest dice gamblers. This puts another yakuza gang on his heels, and during one donnybrook, a passing girl is injured. Ichi, who feels the call of giri (duty) more keenly than other supposedly honest men, takes it upon himself to raise the money for the expensive medicine the girl will require to recover from the ensuing infection and fever. This leads to one of the best, most suspenseful sequences yet, as Ichi fends off an attack from the yakuza in a reedy swamp, releases he has lost the precious box of medicine in the reeds during the fight, and searches the area with increasing, literally blind, desperation.
Kenji Misumi has become my favorite director in the series, with this, the very first movie, and the Zatoichi-with-a-baby flick Fight, Zatoichi, Fight. Misumi doesn’t skimp on the swordplay, but also takes his time with the plot and the development of relationships, and this yields some stellar moments. He always finds a way to let Katsu show some genuine, deep emotions, and his Zatoichi movies – this one especially – display a moral complexity that leaves the viewer chewing over possibilities long after the first pass.
Zatoichi’s Vengeance (1966)
Once again Ichi finds himself in possession of a package to be delivered, and once again he determines not to do it, and once again, fate pushes him in the proper direction to not only fulfill the duty thrust upon him, but to make another delivery of king-sized whoopass on those most deserving it.
This time Ichi receives a purse from a dying man killed for cheating at dice; the ronin hired to butcher him (Shigeru Amachi) also winds up at the village where the dead man’s son lives, a village only recently taken over by a cruel yakuza boss. This, of course, is the gang that you know Ichi will inevitably turn into Bad Guy Soup, but things are complicated by a blind monk (Jun Hamamura) Ichi encounters on the road, who constantly lays a guilt trip on the masseur about his violent ways, and how those ways are corrupting the admiring son. This results in Ichi allowing himself to receive a humiliating beating from the thugs, to rob the boy of his new idol – and that will lead to the vengeance of the title.
There are some nice variations on the usual Zatoichi themes here. Ichi has been dealing with his conscience on matters of violence before this point, and is only too keenly aware of the impact of his actions on the boy, to the point where he begins carrying a normal cane instead of his cane sword. The problem is, assholes keep being assholes, which something even the monk admits when Ichi, after his beating, comes upon the yakuza attempting to kidnap a woman to extort even more money from the merchants, and he exacts the first down payment on his vengeance. The monk is trying to make some sort of point about a Zen-like duality in his responses, but let’s face it: he’s just screwing with Ichi’s head.
This is Amachi’s second appearance in the series, playing a character diametrically opposed to the noble, tubercular samurai of the first movie. His character here, Kurobe, is a samurai who has definitely lost his way, and his personal path to ruin has also destroyed the life of his lover, who is now a prostitute in a local bordello. Kurobe must kill Ichi so the Boss will pay off her debt to the brothel and they can begin their lives together anew; but it is not a conclusion that she even wants anymore, nor is it likely, given Ichi’s skill.
Zatoichi’s Pilgrimage (1966)
As ever, I am indebted to Criterion’s supplementary material, and especially Chris D., for pointing out to me things that are not quite so obvious on a first pass. Pilgrimage has a different feel from previous Zatoichi movies, and this was originally by design; director Kazuo Ikehiro and star Katsu brought in Kaneto Shindo, the director of Onibaba (and, in a couple of years, Kuroneko) to pen a tale of Ichi traveling to the 88 temples of the region to pray for the spirits of those he has killed. He also prays that he will not be called upon to kill again.
Ichi is praying to wrong gods, or, more to the point, the heads of Daiei Studios worshipped different gods entirely; the Zatoichi movies were its only consistent money-makers, and the story was quickly rewritten to provide a more typical experience. A lone bandit ambushes Ichi shortly after his prayer, and Ichi reluctantly follows the dead man’s remarkably intelligent horse to the man’s home – where he will, against all odds, fall in love again, this time with the sister of the man he cut down.
The Boss who sent the doomed man to kill Ichi is determined to take over the entire area, including the sister and her house. The wily villagers – or “weasels” as the sister refers to them, prefer to just sit back and let the infamous Zatoichi take care of their bandit problem. This leads to a High Noon-style showdown, with the badly outnumbered Ichi taking on the gang as the sister pounds on doors, uselessly begging the villagers to help.
Ikehiro isn’t using the same frenetic camerawork he employed in Chest of Gold or Flashing Sword; he uses, instead, a very fluid, moving camera that still sets this apart from the more passive point-of-view of other entries. One can bemoan the what-if, the introspective Zatoichi movie that was lost to a more commercial product; but Pilgrimage is still refreshing enough in its approach to make it stand out from its brethren.
Zatoichi’s Cane Sword (1966)
That’s an unusual enough title, but what you’re not expecting is how appropriate it turns out to be.
Ichi finds his usual dying man on the road, then circumstances route him to that man’s village, where, as usual, a predatory brute of a Boss and his thugs have taken over from the benign dead guy on the road. What elevates this movie above the usual is that Ichi has a chance meeting with Senzo (Eijiro Tono), an alcoholic blacksmith who was once a renowned sword maker. Senzo recognizes Ichi’s cane sword as the work of his mentor, and his trained eye also detects a tiny crack in the blade. He estimates that the sword has one more good blow in it, then it will snap.
Ichi leaves the cane sword with Senzo, as a memento of his past master, and that is the crux of what makes this movie so good: Ichi will spend the better part of the story bladeless, surviving only by his quick wits and formidable reputation (the fact that he can still dole out a serious beating with a common staff versus bullies with swords is a definite plus).
Eventually, though, Ichi is going to have to return to Senzo to retrieve his cane sword, because the evil Boss and an equally corrupt Inspector General must be stopped, a maiden’s honor must be protected, and lots of bad guys are being mean to honest people. The resolution regarding the movie’s title character is somewhat telegraphed, but that doesn’t make it any less satisfying. This is an especially entertaining attempt to vary the Zatoichi formula, and fifteen movies into the series, that variation is very welcome, indeed.
I’m going to pretend that we all know about who Zatoichi is and get right to the point. Right after this commercial from the Criterion Collection for the box set that’s been consuming my free time:
Zatoichi and the Chest of Gold (1964)
It has been rightly pointed out that the Zatoichi movies only have one plot: Zatoichi comes to town, finds some people in trouble, turns the bad guys into hash (including at least one opponent smart/skilled enough to give him a challenge), and then leaves town. Where the fun comes in is the differing natures of the conflicts, and in this case (and the movie that follows it), the energized, often frenzied camerawork of young director Kazuo Ikehiro.
This time, a group of farming communities has managed to scrape together enough money to pay off the corrupt magistrate’s taxes, and, of course, the chest holding the money (with a large sign that reads “TAX PAYMENT”) is hijacked by thugs working for the magistrate. Among them is Tomisaburo Wakayama, making his second appearance in the series, this time as a cruel ronin named Jushiro, who has a fondness for the whip.
Ichi, who traveled to the main village to do penance at the grave of a man he killed almost by accident back in the first movie, gets blamed for the theft, as does a local yakuza formerly revered by the farmers, Chuji Kunisada (Shogo Shimada) (Kunisada is an actual historical character, and the subject of at least three other movies, which explains his eventual disappearance from the story). Ichi, of course, promises to get the chest of gold back.
Once more, Ichi proves himself a saint by not only working to retrieve the farmers’ gold, but by putting up with a ton of abuse – twice – from the panicking mob, when he could obviously cut down the lot of them. Another startling addition by director Ikehiro is stage blood. Ichi’s previous outings were all of the “clean cut” variety, but there’s a fair amount of the red stuff in evidence here, and it’s pretty shocking in relation to what has come before.
Zatoichi’s Flashing Sword (1964)
The prologue has Ichi dozing in a bath house, and a bunch of yakuza considering killing him in his sleep. Ichi is bothered by buzzing flies, however, and rouses himself long enough to bisect several flies in flight – causing the yakuza to reconsider their plan. Ikehiro’s camera weaves about the room, giving us the fly’s Point Of View, presaging the imaginative camerawork of Scott Spiegel in movies like Intruder and Texas Blood Money.
In the movie proper, Ichi gets shot in the back by a rogue yakuza trying to make his name. The wounded masseur is pulled from a river by a passing lady and her retinue, and she pays to have his wounds treated. Ichi travels to her village to thank her for her kindness, and finds himself, once again, embroiled in a conflict between two yakuza gangs. The first, headed by the charitable lady’s father, is pretty benign, controlling the traffic at a river ford and looking out for the workers. The opposing boss, nowhere near as nice (and has the bad teeth to prove it) wants the river ford franchise, and is conniving with the local magistrate to take it over.
Ichi is upset, feeling that a yakuza working with a magistrate is the lowest of the low, and helps out where he can (did I mention that the good Boss’ estranged son is the guy who shot Ichi in the back? And that Ichi is going to wind up saving the young thug’s ass?). Eventually, though, Zatoichi’s reputation works against him, and the threat of the magistrate finding out the good Boss is harboring a violent fugitive forces Ichi’s ouster from the compound; of course, this leaves the good guys open to slaughter from the bad guys. Which leads to a pissed-off Zatoichi stalking the bad guy compound, cutting down candles and villains alike as fireworks illuminate his housecleaning in bright greens and reds.
It’s been pointed out that Flashing Sword feels a bit rushed, and the plot is a bit more clear-cut than is usual in a Zatoichi movie; we never once see this conniving magistrate we hear so much about, nor his compound. But the money and time is put where it needs to be, and Ichi’s avenging angel act, extinguishing lights and encouraging cowardly gangsters to come into dark rooms and find him, is one of the best in the series so far. Katsu also gets to exercise his comic muscles quite a bit in the first act, leavening the mood.
Fight, Zatoichi, Fight (1964)
It seems like any franchise of any length is eventually going to get a baby thrown into the mix, and usually with disastrous results. This time, Ichi accepts a discounted ride in a palanquin, unaware he’s being followed by five assassins. While the assassins rush to a point where they can ambush the conveyance, Ichi and the two bearers encounter a woman carrying a baby, who has collapsed by the side of the road. Ichi insists she take over his ride, with disastrous results for her when the assassins plunge their swords into the covered palanquin.
An investigation in the village uncovers that the woman had been left for collateral for a loan taken out by her husband, a merchant down on his luck. She had worked off the debt and given birth to the merchant’s son in the meantime. Ichi determines to deliver the boy to his father, 65 miles away, though there is still the problem of the five assassins, and the pickpocket Ichi encounters on the way (and hires as a nanny). Along the way he will bust up a crooked dice game, kill yakuza while changing a diaper, and form quite a surrogate family with the baby and the pickpocket, who is so overcome by her love for the baby and Ichi’s honor that she swears to reform her ways.
Here’s a bit of a SPOILER, so you may want to look away: Ichi becomes quite attached to the baby, and despite his reluctance, delivers the boy to the father – only to discover that he is not the hard-working merchant he had imagined, but a newly minted yakuza who used the loan to get rid of his wife for a much more advantageous marriage. Ichi vows to raise the boy himself, until convinced otherwise by a kindly but stern monk. Ichi leaves the boy with the monk, realizing that this course represents the child’s best chance at a decent life. “Teach him to read and write. Raise him to be a good man.”
Then Ichi goes to face off with the last surviving assassin, who has teamed up with the baby’s father to ambush Ichi with a torch-bearing mob. Katsu, his kimono on fire, still takes care of business.
At this point, there are a lot of things you expect from Zatoichi. He’s been pretty endearing so far, but you do not expect him to be downright cute, or, finally, to break your damn heart. Director Kenji Misumi returns to the series with this entry, and his calmer esthetic works well for this storyline; the sentiment is neither forced nor mawkish, though it certainly could have been. There is still plenty of action, but Fight, Zatoichi, Fight stands out as a novel chapter in the franchise.
Adventures of Zatoichi (1964)
The Bond-like vignettes vanished with the last entry, and the stirring music by Akira Ifukube seems more and more spaghetti western influenced, with a thrilling flamenco guitar motif. This time Ichi is traveling to Mount Miyagi to “welcome the sunshine of the New Year”, and accepts a letter from another traveler to deliver to a maid at an inn. He reaches the village and finds it crowded with traveling vendors and entertainers, all groaning under onerous new taxes from the local Boss in league with a corrupt official (of course).
The inn is crowded and Ichi winds up sharing a room with a young lady searching for her father, a village headman who was daring enough to protest the new taxes making life unbearable for his townfolk. This is another thread in one of the most elaborately tangled plots yet, until one scene where a hurried confession ties it all together like the Dude’s ruined rug.
Add to this the local elderly drunk, who Zatoichi thinks may actually be his long-lost father, and the picture’s Big Bad, a ronin named Gouonosuke, the third son of a lowly retainer who is so desperate to prove himself that he sets his sights on Zatoichi. It’s a remarkably well-rounded performance by Mikijiro Hira, who fans of Criterion releases of chanbara flicks will recognize from Three Outlaw Samurai and Sword of the Beast. Jumbled as the plotlines may be, they come together well in one of the more emotionally complex of the Zatoichi movies.
Zatoichi’s Revenge (1965)
The spaghetti theme is in full bloom under the opening credits, simple black on a white background. There are two assassins on Ichi’s trail this time, as his wanderings bring him back to the village where he learned the art of massage. He also discovers his former teacher has been murdered, and the teacher’s daughter indentured to the local Boss’ brothel to pay off a loan made to the teacher just before his death. Of course, none of this sits well with Ichi.
The lion’s share of this movie deals with Ichi’s chance encounter with a dice thrower at the Boss’ gambling den, Denroku the Weasel, played by veteran comedian Norihei Miki. In his ongoing campaign to bring the Boss (and the obligatory corrupt magistrate) down, Ichi visits the dice game, and as usual is winning nicely until Denroku is brought in as a cooler. The scenes where Ichi reveals the tricks involved in cheating are always a treat; something is always going to get cut in half in some extraordinary way.
Denroku has a soft spot, an eleven year-old daughter he has been raising himself, and the Boss puts pressure on that spot, eventually driving both to betray their friendship with Ichi – which yields surprising results.
Ichi himself will betray one of his own codes, that he never strikes first, but it’s forgivable when his targets are two of the most vile villains yet, indulging in embezzlement, murder, rape and forced prostitution with an unholy glee, beating and starving the indentured, unwilling women. Some of these scenes are pretty hard to watch, but you can get through them secure in the fact that there is some shit that Zatoichi simply will not tolerate.
You also begin to get the impression that one of the reasons the Tokugawa Shogunate eventually collapsed was under-population, as Ichi seems to cut through about a hundred thugs per movie, at least. Not that I’m complaining – that’s what I’m here to see. And so, apparently, was the Japanese public, as we are only ten movies into a twenty-five movie set.
I’ve been aware of, though not necessarily a fan of, the character Zatoichi for years. Traveling masseur, blind Yakuza, compulsive gambler, master swordsman. He was created in a popular short story by Kan Shimozawa in 1948. In 1962, the samurai flick was undergoing a renaissance – this is the time of Yojimbo, Sanjuro, Hara-Kiri. Daiei Studio wants in on this, and brings the short story to the screen, developed by a young actor named Shintaro Katsu, and what was once an incidental character becomes the linchpin of one of the longest-running film series in the world.
In late November, Criterion released a massive box set of 25 of the 26 Katsu movies (lacking only Katsu’s swan song, the 1989 Zatoichi the Blind Swordsman), and the fates were exceedingly kind on its timing, as the street date was during the Barnes & Noble regular Criterion 50% off sale, rendering the set affordable by mere mortals like myself (if you ignored every other Criterion title during that sale, anyway). Reproduced in the lovely illustrated book that comes with the set, is that original Shimozawa short story, allowing the viewer to start off where the Japanese public did, almost tabula rasa, knowing of the character, but not much.
The Tale of Zatoichi (1962)
Ichi (the zato is a prefix meaning, among other things, “blind”) travels into town to accept the invitation of yakuza boss Sukegoro (Elijiro Yanagi), who once saw Ichi’s impressive swordplay. Sukegoro is counting on Ichi’s skill for an upcoming war with rival boss Shigezo, mainly because his opponent has hired an itinerant ronin, the tubercular Hirate (Shigeru Amachi) as his muscle. Unfortunately for both bosses, Hirate and Ichi meet while fishing at a nearby lake, and the two warriors immediately recognize each other’s weary dignity and honor, and they become drinking buddies. Hirate’s illness reaches a crisis, and Sukegoro seizes the opportunity to attack, insulting Ichi and throwing him out as “useless”.
Too bad that Shigezo has appealed to Hirate’s respect for Ichi on the samurai’s sickbed; the boss sighs that without Hirate, he’ll have to dispatch the blind man from a distance, with his secret weapon, a rifle. Hirate rises, calling for his kimono and sword, rather than let his friend die by such cowardly means. Which means that Ichi, on his way out of town, finds out the ailing Hirate is at the battle, cutting a swatch through Sukegoro’s men even while coughing up blood, and hastens to join. He and the samurai have a final, frenetic battle on a bridge, and Hirate gets what he had wanted: death at the hands of a respected foe, not some weasel with a gun. Sukegoro is victorious over the demoralized clan, but Ichi, enraged that a good man died to no fitting purpose, tells off the boss, arranges for Hirate’s funeral, and leaves his sword cane at his graveside.
Ichi giving up his signature weapon at the end is the surest signal that Daiei had no idea what they were unleashing upon the Japanese movie scene. Make no mistake, this is the Dr. No of Zatoichi movies; the character, not yet fully formed, is still compelling, though there are times he seems to be a guest star in his own movie. The Japanese love to root for the underdog… who doesn’t? … and Ichi’s willingness to endure abuse until the time is right casts him in this light until he reveals he has the power to put down bullies quite permanently. In addition to his dazzling swordplay, we are introduced to his acute hearing (and gambling compulsion) when he opens the picture by running a nice scam on some low-level yakuza who think they can cheat a blind man at dice.
The swordplay is at a minimum in this entry, and might not be the ideal entry point for a casual viewer looking to get into the Zatoichi series. But the time put into establishing the Hirate/Ichi friendship is well spent, and we are introduced to the fact that Ichi is a powerful chick magnet. Women – never the most respected people in any culture, certainly not in Edo-era Japan – sense his common decency, despite the fact he considers himself wicked and beyond redemption; a result of the many people he’s cut down in his career, some of which he regrets. This is the first time we will see him walk away from the love of a good woman, the waitress Otane (Masayo Banri, taking a break from her usual sex kitten roles) – but certainly not the last. Overall, it feels a lot more like the previous year’s Yojimbo than a Zatoichi movie – but that will change.
The Tale of Zatoichi Continues (1962)
Surprised by the success of Tale of Zatoichi, Daiei rushed out this sequel, which only runs a trim 72 minutes. One of the benefits of such a short length is the story moves forward briskly, and if there were not so many plot points carried over from the first movie, I would almost recommend it as an entry point into the series.
Ichi – who has procured another sword-cane – is journeying back to the temple of the first movie to fulfill his promise to visit Hirate’s grave after a year. Along the way, he’s spared the trouble of dealing with some thugs who try to ambush him by the intervention of a one-armed ronin, Yoshiro (Tomisaburo Wakayama, moonlighting as Kenzaburo Jo). Trying to earn some money, Ichi is called upon to massage a Lord, who misbehaves in a most unLordly manner – turns out the Lord is insane, and in order to keep Ichi from telling anyone, his retainers sends out a couple of men to kill the blind man. This goes about as well for the killers as would be expected.
So the retainer hires the yakuza Boss Kambei (Sonosuke Sawamura) to track down and kill Ichi. Meantime, Boss Sukegoro, hearing that Ichi is returning, is also plotting his death. While the retainers are searching every inn for Ichi, he falls in with a prostitute named Osetsu (Yoshie Mizutani), who is a dead ringer for Ichi’s former love – and also the former love of that mysterious Ronin, Yoshiro. To cut to the chase, Yoshiro is Ichi’s brother, only pretending to be a samurai, and he lost his arm in a fight with Ichi over that very same long-lost love. Yoshiro is on the lam for robbery and murder, and Kambei and Sukegoro join forces to take down both men. On top of all that, the pretty Otane is back, scheduled to marry an honest, nondescript carpenter, a match of which Ichi heartily approves.
Even at this truncated length, the pacing is much more even in this entry, even as the complexity of plot that will be a trademark through the series surfaces, and there is much more swordplay. Tomisaburo Wakayama was Katsu’s brother in real life, and it’s not the last time he’ll crop up in the Zatoichi series. There’s a bit of eerieness whenever he does, since I know him best from the Lone Wolf and Cub movies. Crossovers with other film heroes is still in Zatoichi’s future; but it’s hard to not get all tingly at the prospect of a Zatoichi/Itto Ogami team-up.
New Tale of Zatoichi (1963)
Daiei finally realized they had something special on their hands, and the third entry in the series is the first in color, to marvelous effect.
Ichi, sick of all the killing, travels back to his old territory. On his trail, though, is the brother of Boss Kambei, Yasuhiko (Fujio Suga), seeking revenge. This vendetta is put on hold by Ichi’s sword mentor, the fallen samurai Banno (Seizaburo Kawazu). Banno runs a fencing school, and laments the fact that none of his students ever practice with Ichi’s passion or precision. At one point, Banno overcomes Ichi’s aversion to showing off his skills by pressuring the masseur into a dazzling display of his draw, slicing through four candles in one move.
Banno is, however, involved with a group of anti-Shogunate samurai called the Mito Tengu (who might as well have saved their time, the Shogunate s going to collapse all by itself in twenty years or so). Needing money to fund their crusade, they plot to kidnap one of Banno’s wealthy students for ransom – Ichi’s demonstration is only the device to get the student out of his house at night.
Further complicating matters is Banno’s little sister Yayoi (Mikiko Tsubouchi), who has blossomed into a young woman during Ichi’s absence. Banno hopes to marry her to a wealthy samurai, which would be his ticket back to the capital city of Edo, and the high life. Yayoi resists this idea, and in fact proposes to Ichi, a man she has known almost her entire life, and whom she knows to be good. This leads to perhaps one of the most touching scenes in the series, as Ichi swears off the sword forever, only to be confronted by the vengeful Yasuhiko. When Ichi refuses to duel him, they proceed to play dice for the masseur’s fate: if Ichi wins, Yasuhiko will forswear his vendetta and leave the two to their lives together. If Ichi loses, Yasuhiko will take his right arm.
Ichi loses.
Yasuhiko, however, seeing the genuine love between the two, flips over one of the dice, announces he’s lost, and leaves the compound.
Banno, however, will not agree to the marriage, because Ichi is a mere lowlife yakuza and Yayoi, is after all, samurai. Banno has, in fact, decided to betray the Mito Tengu and take the ransom for his own use, to fund Yayoi’s wedding to that wealthy samurai. Just in case we haven’t figured out Banno is a heel, yet, he also kills the unarmed Yasuhiko because the man drunkenly insults him.
It’s that murder that causes Ichi to follow Banno, free the hostage from the Mito Tengu, and waste all the bad guys, including his dismissory mentor, all before the shocked Yayoi. Ichi sighs that he just seems to be That Sort of Person Anyway, and walks off into the night.
This is apparently the last time we are going to get such a concentrated dose of Ichi’s backstory; Daiei realized that if they were going to milk this franchise for all it was worth, they were going to have to be much more parsimonious with such details. The fact that Ichi is ready to give up his itinerant existence is something of a shock in only the third movie of the series. This still isn’t an ideal entry point for those reasons. The color photography, though, is sumptuous.
Zatoichi the Fugitive (1963)
New Tale seems a bit studio bound, especially in contrast to Fugitive, which finds Ichi on the road, even participating in a village Sumo competition, which he wins, because he’s Zatoichi, after all. While he’s relaxing by a riverside, Ichi is forced to kill a shabby yakuza trying to ambush him; he finds out from the dying man that there is a bounty on his head.
Ichi seeks out the gangster’s mother to apologize for his death, and, as usual, this act of kindness will land him in the middle of a conflict between a thuggish Yakuza Boss and a more ethical one, made even more complicated by the return of Otane from the first two movies. Seems she didn’t marry that nice carpenter after all, but has fallen in with a brutish, hard-drinking ronin who is going to be very interested in that ever- escalating bounty. It’s also going to get personal as the ronin realizes that Otane still has feelings for Ichi, and vice versa. This leads up to one of the largest final fights yet, as a small army of Yakuza makes the mistake of putting itself between the ronin and a very pissed-off Ichi.
This is the best Zatoichi flick yet, with our hero’s character fully developed, the trademark tangled plot and personal interactions are in place, and the location shooting opening up the frame nicely. The return of Otane is about the only thing that keeps me from recommending this as the entry film; overall, this feels like the first Zatoichi movie that actually is a Zatoichi movie, if you know what I mean.
Zatoichi On The Road (1963)
When I’m asked what is a good entry point to the series, I’m probably going to go with this one; not only does the typically byzantine storyline show off Zatoichi’s altruism and sense of honor, it also is the first to start with a James Bond-style vignette (just to overwork that comparison) to let us know that we are entering the world of the blind swordsman.
A representative of a yakuza gang has been sent to fetch Ichi, though he is under orders to not tell the masseur any details; instead, he continues to ply Ichi with good food and drink as they travel to their destination, which is just fine with Ichi. A rival gang member recognizes the representative, though, and hires three traveling ronin to kill both men. Too bad for the rep, who dies, and for the ronin, who follow suit quickly at Ichi’s blade. The wife of one of the ronins, while casually gathering what money she can off the corpses, reveals the source of the attempted assassination. Ichi wearily continues on the road, duty-bound to tell the Boss what happened to his man.
It is on the way there that Ichi stumbles, almost literally, on a dying man, who asks him to “protect Omitsu”. Ichi has been crossing paths all night with samurai looking for a girl, and he finds her, hiding in a nearby shack. Omitsu (Shiho Fujimara, who still has a busy career to this day) is the daughter of a rich Edo merchant who made the mistake of resisting the advances of a nearby Lord, hence the murderous samurai, as she apparently scarred the rutting Lord’s face. Ichi spends a goodly portion of the movie trying to get the girl back to her father, only to have her kidnapped – twice – by that ronin’s widow, seeking revenge as she best can. Ichi, thinking he has gotten the girl safe passage to Edo, reluctantly agrees to take part in the yakuza Boss’ war, but at a steep fee – only to find that the opposing Boss is prepared to use Omitsu as a bargaining chip.
The story has plenty of opportunities to show off Ichi’s quick wits and basic goodness. He gets deep into a yakuza hideout by simply walking in the front door and asking for the boss – no one gives a blind masseur a second look. As he waits for the final battle to start, he says to the young yakuza assigned to be his dogsbody, “Stay in the back when the fighting starts. You don’t want to be killed in a stupid fight.” Not only does On The Road provide all these Ichi basics, as well as a wistful examination of the growing affection between Ichi and Omitsu – it also does it with a rousing good story, a collection of bad guys you can’t wait to see get their final comeuppance, and, once more, nicely expansive cinematography.
So, I recommend it as the entry point of the Zatoichi series for the complete virgin. If you like it, you can feel safe going back to the first one and then making your way through the series – especially if the idea of an actual story that requiresattention does not frighten you.
Thanksgiving interrupted my steady diet of Zatoichi movies long enough to realize that we had gone a significant amount of time without a Crapfest. Heeeey, we’d been busy! And as it is almost impossible to put one together over the Christmas holidays, it was Thanksgiving or nothing, Thanksgiving being one of the few weekends I can actually wrangle a Saturday off.
But my experience is not the same as others. Alan and Mark both had their weekends stolen away by the dreaded 10-Out-Of-12 tech rehearsals for shows they were in. I wondered aloud who would be so cruel as to schedule 10-Out-Of-12s on Thanksgiving weekend. Darth Vader? Atomic Hitler? Anne Coulter? Perhaps it is best that in large part, I am no longer part of the theatrical world.
Because here I was at Dave’s house, with Rick, Erik and Paul. The room did not feel particularly crowded, and there was a genial ease about the whole thing. A rejuvenating experience I desperately needed. Also, Erik allowed me check off an item on my Bucket List by bringing a bottle of Absinthe, along with the necessary spoon. I admit I had my doubts since I hate licorice, but the Green Fairy won me over. I quite enjoyed it, and promised the Twitterverse that I would let it know immediately if it drove any of us mad. Of course, considering what we usually watch at these things, many felt the “driving” part was a little too late.
While everyone got settled in, Dave started things off with Starship Invasions. If you’ve ever seen Starship Invasions, you know that ignoring most of it is the best course of action. I recall this getting wide release after the success of Star Wars; it’s made by Canadians trying to make an Italian movie – at least it always seemed that way to me. The bad guy is Christopher Lee (of course), who is part of a coalition of alien races who sabotages and murders all the other representatives (and when he guns down the Space Strippers, you know he’s evil), so he can exterminate all Earthlings with his Suicide Ray and repopulate it with his leotarded minions. Luckily, one good guy saucer escapes and enlists UFOlogist Robert Vaughn’s help.
L to R: Space Stripper, Christopher Lee, Egghead
The ships and alien designs were taken from eyewitness reports of close encounters. That’s a cool touch in a movie that seems a lot like The Terrornauts with a slightly better budget.
Really, the best part was Dave reminiscing about how this was yet another movie his father refused to take him to see.
Over Dave’s misgivings, I convinced him to start with one of the Dogville shorts, which is high-grade, hallucinatory, what-the-hell-did-I-just-watch material. A series of movie parodies starring dogs in costumes, made from 1929-1931, from the guys who would later direct the Three Stooges shorts. Paul immediately felt this was super-awesome and insured that we would be watching one of these each fest for the foreseeable future. This is what we did with Pink Lady & Jeff, which is a comparison which made Paul re-think this course of action.
What we watched was “Who Killed Rover?” a “Phido Vance” mystery that I appreciate for its refreshingly downbeat ending, but everyone else – save Paul – claimed to be scarred for life by the experience. Paul wanted to immediately continue on to “The Dogway Melody”, but was booed down. In deference to Paul, here is an excerpt from it:
I had brought a metric ton of sausage for our evening meal, and Dave, grillmeister that he is, has an elaborate process for getting the coals just so, which is time-consuming, but I cannot fault the results. So while the charcoal was doing its combustible thing, I put in a disc I had gotten from Diabolik, ModCinema’s ColorScape, Volume One, which is a compilation of movie trailers, commercials, and proto-music videos from the late 60s to early 70s. Or what I like to refer to as “Making the young punks regret they grew up in the 80s”.
Paul and I had a major discussion about how we were lied to as children, and we were certain that adult life was exactly like the scenes unfolding before us: all the grown-ups were swinging (except our parents, who were too old to swing), and every night ended with an orgy. Blake Edwards’ The Party, starring Peter Sellers? That was only a typical Tuesday night. Past that, the experience was mostly wondering why we weren’t watching the movies excerpted in the trailers.
I love damn near all the music on the ColorScape disc, though this was not shared by my compatriots, the heathens. So ha, compatriots! Here’s this one again! Heathens!
After two hours of reveling in 60s hedonism and psychedelic music, the sausages were ready, and so were we – ready for Weng Weng. But we were wrong. Nobody is ready for Weng Weng.
The movie, of course, is the infamous For Y’ur Height Only (why the dropped “o”? I have no idea), starring Weng Weng (actually Ernesto de la Cruz) as “Agent 00”. Weng Weng, at 2′ 9″, is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the shortest man to ever have a lead role in a movie.
In the movie, Dr. Kohler is kidnapped because crimelord Mr. Giant wants his “N-bomb”. What exactly the N-bomb does is never explained, and that doesn’t really matter, because Dr. Kohler is going to vanish for the next 80 minutes, and when he returns at the end, you’re going to ask, “Who’s the Anglo?”, because those 80 minutes are going to be jam-packed with Weng Weng kicking ass and using scaled-down James Bond gadgetry.
Weng Weng was apparently an accomplished martial artist, and is at the correct height to A) be below your peripheral vision, and B) punch you in the nuts. Repeatedly. And when that doesn’t work, his pretty assistant will just pick him up and throw him at you. Weng Weng eventually faces off with Mr. Giant, who is, to no one’s surprise, a dwarf (oh come on, that’s a given!). This fight scene gave rise to one of the better lines of the night, “My kung fu is smaller than yours!” Although I also give props to Dave, who, while watching Weng Weng leap about and traumatize gonads, entoned, “That’s some X-Men shit, right there.”
Look, there are simply not words in the English language to adequately describe how awesome is the mighty Weng Weng. He never made any movies with Chuck Norris or Bruce Willis or Arnold Schwarzenegger because they knew they would be completely upstaged. And, by God, Weng Weng does all his own stunts, because face it: There are not a lot of 2′ 9″ stunt men out there.
Weng Weng’s amazing kung fu skills put us in the mood for more chop-sockey, and what I had in the Bag was Five Element Ninjas, which is not the best of the Chang Cheh/Venom collaborations, but is still pretty great.
There is one of those acrimonious competitions between two clans in the World of Martial Arts, and the current Lord of the World of Martial Arts brings in a ringer – a samurai, who, when he loses his second match, commits hara-kiri, but sends a note to his pal the Ninja Lord, who proceeds to challenge the victorious clan to another contest, but kills all the best fighters using Evil Ninja Tricks.
The Five Elements come in with the various groups of Ninjas and their specialties, Earth, Water, Fire, Wood and Metal. The Metal Ninjas are the least stealthy ninjas ever, dressed in dazzling gold lamé. But the ones we really hated were the Earth Ninjas, who burrow underground and stab upward with nasty hooked spears, which is a trick that even Weng Weng finds too dirty.
(This also leads to the movie’s most infamous scene, where one good guy soldiers on against the Head Ninja, even through multiple Earth Ninja stabbings; in fact, his internal organs are hanging down through his trouser leg. He does pretty well, too, until he trips over his own guts.)
The ninjas attack the fortified Good Guy compound (thanks to Sinji, the cute ninja, masquerading as an orphan waif), leaving just one good guy intact – who escapes, meets up with an old master who knows the ninja arts (which, we are told, originated in China). Then the survivor and the master’s other three students take on the Five Element Ninjas and take them down with spectacularly bloody results. This is good, because the treacherous ninjas had taken over The World of Martial Arts, and we can’t have that.
Sinji (that minx!) in her Ninja Negligee
Five Element Ninjas has a bang-up beginning and end, but a very talky middle, while Sinji works her wiles. Perhaps not ideal Crapfest material, but we did really enjoy seeing the Earth Ninjas get their gory comeuppance.
The Ultimate Bait-and-Switch: a Boris Vallejo poster!
Paul fulfilled his wuss duty at this point and went home, which meant it was time to play the R-rated Titty movie (take that, wuss!), and Dave chose Barbarian Queen.
Barbarian Queen is likely best known for its ill-fated star, Lana Clarkson, who didn’t survive a close encounter with Phil Spector. It’s also fairly infamous for its number of rape scenes. (I may be wrong, but I think Deathstalker beats it in that category. In any case, “Rape scene! Take a drink!” is a dangerous game to play with either one)
Lana’s village is kidnapped by slave traders (the synopsis says “Romans”, but they couldn’t afford Roman costumes), and Clarkson tracks them to the big city where the menfolk are turned into gladiators and the womenfolk into sex slaves for the gladiators. With a setup like that, it’s unsurprising that they plan an uprising while Clarkson basically kegels a torturer to death (since it looks like he has eyebrows glued to his glasses, he pretty much deserved that).
I really miss the days when Roger Corman had Joe Dante and Allan Arkush editing his trailers, you know?
It was late, and though I was still full of caffeinated vim, the hour was getting to most of us. Erik, Rick and I packed our bags and thanked Dave for once again allowing us to pollute the atmosphere in his home. Then we privately met in the front yard, discussing the possibility of a Christmas Crapfest, because, after all, Rick had this fabulous new disc of Evilspeak with all the gore that had previously been cut out intact!
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PS. No, Rick!!!! Though I hear Black Devil Doll from Hell is pretty cool…
I should have paid more attention to my story tropes, because guys like Doug are the ones who stab you in the back during climactic battles, or unknowingly cause the Apocalypse. This begins innocently enough with an entry on the aforementioned column, on a movie I had never heard of before: Science Crazed.
In the matter of a few hours, the baby has grown into a strapping adult gauze-faced Fiend, who kills Frank and proceeds to wander the endless halls of the Shelley Institute, looking for victims. The Shelley Institute has an pretty unusual variety of facilities, and a bunch of people doing a variety of things in these facilities, most of them unexplained. None of them know a Fiend is coming, although the thing sounds like a lion with a sinus infection snoring in a cardboard box.
The two assistants do call in a cop (he’s browsing in a local video store) who looks like a high school senior giving his impression of what a loose cannon cop must be like – I haven’t seen a prop gun so misused since Plan 9 From Outer Space. Apparently all the other cops have the weekend off, so he and the two assistants split up to look for the Fiend.
I’ve also seen movies that get confused between daytime and nighttime, but I’ve never seen that in a movie happening indoors. There are plenty of times that the Fiend walks into a fully-lit room, only to have the next scene happen in a spotlight in a dark room. I’d say it’s an artistic conceit, but the rest of the movie argues against any artistry whatsoever.
drfreex.com 