A wandering five man brass band that includes ladies man Torakichi (Hiroshi Ureko) and wannabe violinist Kokichi (Heihachiro Okawa) find themselves stuck at a seaside resort after their latest booking falls through. But the arrival in town of the travelling Asahi circus whose performers are out on strike at the circus manager’s tyrannical behaviour offers the men not just employment … Read the rest
Category: Japan
The Glamorous Ghost (Hajime Sato, Japan, 1964)
A husband named Asami (Ko Nishimura) fed up with his wife Sugie’s (Masumi Harukawa) cheating ways strangles her after an argument. Taking her body in a hearse he then visits her lovers; the president of a large company named Kitamura (Meicho Soganoya) and a physician at Tokyo hospital Dr.Yamagoshi (Nobuo Kaneko) and threatens to expose their affairs and humiliate them … Read the rest
Funeral Parade of Roses (Toshio Matsumoto, Japan, 1969)
At a Tokyo gay bar pretty teen transvestite Eddie (Peter) is the star attraction and carries on a secret relationship with Gonda (Yoshio Tsuchiya) who pushes drugs to the bar’s patrons. But Gonda is also the lover of the bar’s owner, transvestite Leda (Osamu Ogasawara), and fears Leda informing the police about his drug dealing if his affair is discovered. … Read the rest
A Legend of Turmoil (Seiji Izumi, Japan, 1992)
When the boss of the veteran Kasabe union is attacked his loyal second-in-command Otaki (Akira Kobayashi) strikes back but soon discovers that their enemy is a formidable alliance of Yakuza gangs with an ambitious construction boss turned would be politician named Nakajima whose clout means he has the chief of police in his pocket. As violence between the two sides … Read the rest
Internal Sleuth (Kenji Misumi, Japan, 1973)
Veteran cop Okumura (Tomisaburo Wakayama) finds himself on the trail of Sugiyama, who’s stolen a cache of guns from a US airbase and is on the run after shooting dead two police officers. But things get messy when the killer guns down a rival gang member whose boss Okumura is friends with, while the increasingly ruthless Seijin-kai gang, whom Sugiyama … Read the rest
Kiku and Isamu (Tadashi Imai, Japan, 1959)
11 year old Kiku (Emiko Takahashi) and her younger brother Isamu (George Okunoyama) find themselves the object of curiosity and casual cruelty as their classmates taunt them with jibes of ‘Blackie’, ‘Gorilla’ and comments about bananas being their favourite food. Unknown to both their father was a black GI, now gone back to the US. With their Japanese mother dead … Read the rest
Dreams For Sale (Miwa Nishikawa, Japan, 2012)
When the restaurant of husband Kanya (Sadao Abe) and wife Satoko (Takako Matsu) goes up in flames Satoko hits on the idea of using her husband to seduce his way into the affections of a string of lonely single women and then defraud them of their savings – savings the pair can then put toward buying their new restaurant. But … Read the rest
Yakuza Graveyard (Kinji Fukasaku, Japan, 1976)
Tough cop Kuroiwa (Tetsuya Watari) finds his investigations into a Yakuza group complicated by corrupt superiors and his own attraction toward gangster’s wife Keiko (Meiko Kaji). But after he befriends Iwata (Tatsuo Umemiya) – the man lined up to take control of Keiko’s gang – Iwata is murdered while Kuroiwa finds himself suspended, the result of the Chief of Police … Read the rest
One Cut of the Dead (Yuya Nakaizumi, Shinichiro Ueda, Japan, 2017)
A film crew shooting a low-budget zombie pic in an abandoned WW2 facility suddenly come under attack from real zombies.
Cleverly conceived movie-within-a-movie which kicks off with the zombie movie proper before flashing back to show how the crew and project came together and then reruns the whole movie again. This time showing us all the behind-the-scenes shenanigans as the … Read the rest
Devotion to Railway (Minoru Yamada, Japan, 1960)
After four years of work youthful train attendant Yajima (Katsuo Nakamura) sees no value in his job and wants to quit so he can marry girlfriend Kimie (Yoshiko Sakuma). She, however, thinks that job security is more important than a hasty marriage. So Kimie boards the Sakura – the Nagasaki bound express Yajima’s been assigned to – in order to … Read the rest
