Tag: Daiei

Peony Lantern (牡丹燈籠, Satsuo Yamamoto, 1968)

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peony lanternThe Peony Lantern (牡丹燈籠, Kaidan Botan Doro) has gone by many different names in its English version – The Bride from Hades, The Haunted Lantern, Ghost Beauty, and My Bride is a Ghost among various others, but whatever the title of the tale it remains one of the best known ghost stories of Japan. Originally inspired by a Chinese legend, the story was adapted and included in a popular Edo era collection of supernatural tales, Otogi Boko (Hand Puppets), removing much of the original Buddhist morality tale in the process. In the late 19th century, the Peony Lantern also became one of the earliest standard rakugo texts and was then collected and translated by Lafcadio Hearn though he drew his inspiration from a popular kabuki version. As is often the case, it is Hearn’s version which has become the most common.

The central figure in Satsuo Yamamoto’s 1968 prestige picture for Daiei is the third son of a samurai household, Shinzaburo (Kojiro Hongo). This is the first Obon festival since his older brother died leaving a young widow behind him. Kiku, his sister-in-law, is becoming a problem for the clan as her birth family have not called her back and it’s embarrassing for them to have an unattached woman of age wasting away at home. Accordingly, they think the best option is for Shinzaburo to marry his brother’s wife. Shinzaburo is having none of it. A progressive kind of samurai, he spends his time teaching poor children to read and even dreams of opening a school one day but his family most definitely do not approve and see this marriage as an opportunity to put an end to his improper ideas about social justice.

Heading back to the village under a cloud, Shinzaburo helps one of the children push two of the lanterns which had got stuck by the shore out onto the lake. Suddenly two lantern carrying women appear from nowhere and thank him. Later, the same two women arrive at Shinzaburo’s home to thank him again and relate a sad tale – the older woman, Oyone (Michiko Otsuka), is a servant of the younger one, Otsuyu (Miyoko Akaza), and they’ve come from the red light district. Otsuyu apparently hailed from a samurai background but was tricked and forced into the yoshiwara after her father was abandoned by his clan and subsequently fell ill. She is still a virgin but has attracted the attentions of an older wealthy client and is expected to acquiesce to his desires after the Bon festival is over. Shinzaburo seems like such a nice guy that she’d much prefer to stay with him, at least until Bon is over. There is one quite important detail which Oyone and Otsuyu have omitted from their history.

Despite it being Bon – the Japanese summer festival in which the dead return to the land of the living, Shinzaburo never stops to think about where these two women might have come from. Truth be told, he’s in something of a dark place what with the current familial discord which might see him either exiled from his clan (which would entail the loss of his living as well as his status), or an arranged marriage to a woman he doesn’t love who also was previously married to his brother. The villagers are very fond of Shinzaburo and grateful for his efforts with the children. Should they lose him, they would never find a replacement and the children would remain uneducated.

Despite having contributed to the war effort by making a series of propaganda films, director Satsuo Yamamoto was an openly committed communist and though Peony Lantern is in no way overtly political or at least not in the same sense as some of his other work, it nevertheless manages to work in the cruelty and indifference of feudal elites towards the ordinary people below them. This is a theme which is common in kaidan/horror films from this era and particularly from Daiei, but Shinzaburo is something of an exception to the rule as he stems from the samurai order himself. His family find his commitment to educating the peasantry at best eccentric and at worst embarrassing though Shinzaburo is determined to live in a more altruistic way than his rigid, tradition bound relatives.

This does leave him feeling slightly adrift as he’s at odds with both the samurai class of his birth but also with the villagers who see him as a teacher and someone to look up to, but definitely not as one of them. When the pretty Otsuyu and her maid arrive with a tragic story also involving the harshness of the samurai class, it’s primed to catch Shinzaburo’s attention and lonely as he is perhaps he doesn’t quite stop to ask questions when offered the opportunity to play kindly saviour to a sad young woman about to be robbed of her right to choose her own destiny (much as he will be, only worse). His relations with Otsuyu leave him feeling progressively weaker but still he can’t seem to bring himself to the decision to send her away entirely.

Perhaps it’s death Shinzaburo craved all along, an end to his tormented existence and the loneliness that comes of being caught between two social strata in a strictly controlled class hierarchy. The two ghosts are not malicious, they’ve come craving love and kind words from an honest man and hit the jackpot with the softhearted Shinzaburo. Tragic as it all is, perhaps everyone ultimately got what they wanted – an end to the eternal loneliness of having been cast out from one world and unable to fully embrace another.

Despite the emphasis on the indifference of the samurai class, the poor aren’t all saints either as seen in the feckless servant character, Banzo (Ko Nishimura), who begins as comic relief but ends up very much not. He is the first to witness the ghostly nature of the two visitors and to try and save Shinzaburo from their clutches, but when his wife comes home for her Obon holiday everything changes. Banzo’s wife orders him to blackmail the ghosts for money which they eventually get by digging up a neighbouring grave. Little to they know that it’s not supernatural forces which they will need to be worrying about in the future and they will pay a heavy price for their greed.

Yamamoto captures the eeriness of his undead visitors perfectly as they float and glide across the screen. The first scene in which Banzo peeks in on them with Shinzaburo and sees them as they really are is truly shocking as is the raw power with which Oyone later confronts him. Switching effortlessly between nervous, melancholy women seemingly caught in a more Earthly kind of purgatory, and etherial escapees from the underworld, Otsuyu and Oyone continually carry a kind of death-tinged strangeness around with them. A beautifully filmed, supremely creepy adaptation of the classic story, Yamamoto’s Peony Lantern is a suitably macabre, gothic affair which is entirley unafraid to explore the essential darkness of the tale at hand.

 

Ten Dark Women (黒い十人の女, Kon Ichikawa, 1961)

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Ten Women in BlackKon Ichikawa, wry commenter of his times, turns his ironic eyes to the inherent sexism of the 1960s with a farcical tale of a philandering husband suddenly confronted with the betrayed disappointment of his many mistresses who’ve come together with one aim in mind – his death! Scripted by Natto Wada (Ichikawa’s wife and frequent screenwriter until her retirement in 1965), Ten Dark Women (黒い十人の女, Kuroi Junin no Onna) is an absurd noir-tinged comedy about 10 women who love one man so much that they all want him dead, or at any rate just not alive with one of the others.

Kaze (Eiji Funakoshi) is a TV producer by profession, though it might be better to think of him as a professional ladies’ man. He’s married to a woman who owns a bar, but is also carrying on affairs with nine (!) other women plus occasional one night stands with 30-50 others he meets through his work. His wife knows about his affairs and, while not happy about it, is putting up with things like decent wives are supposed to do. However, many of Kaze’s “mistresses” have inconveniently discovered each other’s existences and bonded in their mutual frustration with him. Strangely they all think he’s a great guy and remain very much in love with him but the situation being what it is the entirety of the betrayed wife and mistress support club eventually comes to the same conclusion – Kaze must die!

However, the women are all so devoted to Kaze, they don’t quite want him to disappear so much as for him to pick them and only them to live with happily ever after. One of the women foolishly warns Kaze about their plot as leverage for her marriage proposal but unfortunately for her he still turns her down and returns home to ask his wife what’s going on. She doesn’t deny her murderous intentions and in fact tells him in great detail how they intend to do him in. Kaze, to his credit, says he doesn’t mind very much and only worries about his wife’s future life as a murderess. Together they hatch a plan to fool the other women involving a pistol loaded with blanks and a tomato but nothing quite goes to plan.

An absurdist satire about the intense vanity of the womanising male, Ten Dark Women looks forward to Fellini’s similarly themed 8 1/2 or City of Women though here the idiotic husband at the centre becomes both prey and foil for the group of plotting women seeking revenge against his disloyal ways. Kaze, as he himself admits, is not particularly appealing to women though his position at the TV studio undoubtedly proves useful to some of them. He’s a curiously passive presence, not so much seeking out female company as acquiescing to it. It’s not quite clear if his concern for his wife should she decide to kill him is genuine or a means of manipulative self preservation but at any rate he takes the threat to his life extremely calmly.

Each of the women has their own claims on Kaze but the other thing they all have in common is being the prisoner of an extremely sexist society. Some of the women are with Kaze for careerist reasons, but it’s clear that there is a definite limit placed on a woman’s potential both inside and out of the creative industries. The commercial model makes a play for a more official relationship by bringing up the fact that Kaze’s wife has a job and therefore cannot devote herself entirely to Kaze’s wellbeing as proper wife should (as by implication would she after marrying and retiring from the modelling world). Kaze helped his wife set up her bar which she runs herself though constantly plays hostess to her husband’s industry friends. It appears what Kaze wants is less a devoted wife than an indifferent one who will permit his frequent “indiscretions” whilst also providing him with a conventional “home”.

Another of the women tries to get herself a promotion but her boss, though broadly sympathetic and dangling the idea of a raise, brings up the oft repeated notion that there’s no sense in giving her the job because a woman should leave at some point to marry and have children. When the woman criticises the behaviour of her male colleagues, her boss simply shrugs and admits men in TV aren’t “serious”, yet when she points out that she is serious and works hard she is told that women are better off at home. Women, he says, express themselves through their children whereas men make their mark through a career. The woman says that she believes everyone should try to reach their own potential in whatever way they can but her pleas fall on deaf ears. This notion is repeated later on when the women try to take revenge on Kaze by tricking him into resigning from his job – a man is his work, he claims. A man without a job is nothing at all and a man who is kept by a woman is less than nothing – Kaze is suddenly panicked, losing his occupation and social position is much more frightening to him than losing his life.

The women couldn’t kill the system or the TV, but they could kill Kaze so who can blame them for trying. Another of the women states that the imposed isolation of a man’s working life has cost him the ability to connect with other people on a human level and so his erasure is simply the end of a long process of social death. If some of the women triumph, others retreat as one does in suicide only to return as a ghost longing for the murder plot to succeed so that she and Kaze can be alone together at last. Kaze thinks he’s using each of them, but they have all been using him in one way or another and his only way out lies either in death or becoming a trophy for the most needy of his paramours.

Cynical in tone, Ten Dark Women is an amusingly absurd look at gender roles in early 1960s Japan as each of our women attempts to usurp male power for their own ends, some with more success than others. Ichikawa employs beautiful noir lighting in his elegantly composed black and white photography which, along with its jazzy score, gives the film a familiar feeling of crime laced modernity. An early instance of the feminist revenge film, Ten Dark Women is very much a comedy which avoids making its group of frustrated, resentful women mistreated by a buffoon of a TV exec the butt of its own joke, neatly highlighting the precarious nature of their existence which obliges them to rely on so hollow a support.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

The Snow Woman (怪談雪女郎, Tokuzo Tanaka, 1968)

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snow womanThe Snow Woman is one of the most popular figures of Japanese folklore. Though the legend begins as a terrifying tale of an evil spirit casting dominion over the snow lands and freezing to death any men she happens to find intruding on her territory, the tale suddenly changes track and far from celebrating human victory over supernatural malevolence, ultimately forces us to reconsider everything we know and see the Snow Woman as the final victim in her own story. Previously brought the screen by Masaki Kobayashi as part of his Kwaidan omnibus movie, Tokuzo Tanaka’s expanded look at the classic tale (怪談雪女郎, Kaidan Yukijoro) is one of extreme beauty contrasting human cruelty with supernatural inevitability and the endless quest for compassion.

As in the original folktale, the film begins with two sculptors venturing into snow filled forests looking for the perfect tree to carve a statue of the Buddhist goddess of mercy, Kanon, for the local temple. Having finally located the longed for tree, the pair spend the night in a cabin only to receive a visit from the Snow Woman herself who freezes the older man but is taken by the younger one’s beauty and spares his life, instructing him never to speak of these events.

Yosaku is taken back to the village followed not long after by the tree trunk. In tribute to his master, the head of the temple asks him to complete the statue himself despite his relative lack of experience. Later, a beautiful yet mysterious woman takes shelter from the intense rain under Yosaku’s roof and is taken in by his adoptive mother and wife of his former master. Eventually, Yosaku and “Yuki” fall in love and marry but the two quickly come to the notice of the higher samurai orders who seem determined to ruin their happy union.

Inspired by Lafcadio Hearn’s version of the story, this retelling adds a layer of social commentary with the constant interference of the higher echelons who exist solely to plague those below them with their petty games of subjugation. We first meet the local bailiff Jito when he rides into town trailing a massive entourage and immediately stars beating some of the local children who were playing with piles of wood. When Yosaku’s adoptive mother pleads with them to stop, he beats her too for having the temerity to speak to a samurai. Unfortunately, he has it in for Yosaku because he has another master sculptor he wants to use for the statue, and now he’s also taken a liking to the beautiful Yuki and will stop at nothing to have his wicked way with her. He is in for quite a nasty shock but even so, the higher orders remain the higher orders and those below them are left with no recourse but simply to follow suit.

The real villain of the film is this enforced class system which allows or even encourages those at its summit to run rampant over those below. The samurai will have their way and the people have nothing to oppose them with save their sense of personal integrity. The Snow Woman then becomes the film’s unlikely heroine. By the time we reach the film’s emotionally devastating finale, Yuki claims that she learned human compassion in her life with Yosaku and their child and ultimately sacrifices her own happiness to preserve that of her husband and son. Yosaku finds himself in competition with the other sculptor who manages to complete a beautiful statue but the temple priest finds it wanting, its expression is soulless and devoid of the sense of compassion he was looking for in the face of a goddess of mercy. Yosaku finds the very look he needs in his wife’s face, exhausted from lending her supernatural strength to save the life of a small child and her husband’s freedom, and in her eyes as she prepares to bid goodbye to him.

The Snow Woman is only obeying her own nature and cannot be blamed for merely being what she is, but the human cruelty and selfishness inherent in the feudal world is a matter of choice. Jito is an evil man, doubtless his world has also made him cruel and selfish but the choice always remains for him not to be – a choice which he is incapable of making. Men like Yosaku toil away endlessly and honestly but their rewards are fragile, personal things rarely recognised by the world at large. Only the Snow Woman, a cold creature, possesses the necessary warmth to breath life into a monument to mercy built solely by a pair of sincere hands.

Tanaka creates a stunning visual world using mostly simple effects and optical trickery to bring the Snow Woman’s icy domain into the ordinary feudal environment. The Snow Woman glides eerily through impressively layered snow scenes, dissolving from one world only to reappear in another. Beautifully filmed and filled with warmth and compassion despite its frozen aesthetic, The Snow Woman is deeply moving plea for empathy in a cruel world which successfully makes a tragic heroine out of its supernatural protagonist.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

 

The Rainbow Man (虹男, Kiyohiko Ushihara, 1949)

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The Rainbow Man“The Rainbow Man” sounds like quite a cheerful fellow, doesn’t he? How could you not be excited about a visit from such a bright and colourful chap especially as he generally turns up after the rain has ended? Daiei have once again found something happy and made it sinister in this 1949 genre effort which is sometimes called Japan’s first science fiction film though there isn’t really any sci-fi content here so much as a strange murder mystery with a weird drug at its centre.

The story begins with lady reporter Mimi beating her rival Akashi to an important scoop but soon after she runs into an old school friend who seems about to become a major story herself. Yurie has been taken in for questioning regarding a mysterious incident in which a rural cottage burnt down with the body of a murdered man hidden inside it. Heading into town with her maid, Yurie was taken ill near the crime scene and the maid left to go get help meaning Yurie can’t account for the hour or so that she was alone there and being so ill her memories aren’t clear either.

The case at hand concerns the extremely strange Maya family which is led by the mad scientist father who insists on studying artificial rainbows despite an ancient curse on his family which makes this a very bad idea. He is joined by his equally mad artist son Katsuto who creates disturbing, psychedelic paintings, younger son Toyohiko who has recently returned after a five year absence, and his second wife who likes Yurie and cats but not much else. The murdered man, Hachiro, was also connected to the family and was the first to fall victim to the curse of the Rainbow Man!

Unlike some of Daiei’s other genre pictures from this period, Rainbow Man (虹男, Niji Otoko) is a little more straightforward and doesn’t feature any particularly complex special effects. That said, the most notable feature of the film is the rainbow effect itself – right before the murders occur, the victims start shouting about the Rainbow Man whilst hallucinating bright rainbow-like colours. At this point, the screen erupts with psychedelic colours in strong contrast to the regular black and white footage of the rest of the movie. As surprising as this effect is now, it must have been truly shocking to the audience of 1949 who were understandably much less used to colour movies let alone the use of colour in films otherwise monochrome.

Though The Rainbow Man is tagged as sci-fi or horror, it’s really much more of a regular murder mystery with a scientific bent. In the end, it all comes down to the effects of the perfectly natural real world drug mescaline which though unusual is not a scientific fiction. The only instance of strangeness is in the bizarre rainbow man curse in which the Maya family is not supposed to be asking questions about rainbows, which is fairly odd thing to be cursed with, but then they are a very odd family in all aspects. There is, however, a strong mad scientist vibe which, mixed with the creepy old Western style house and persistent stormy weather, makes for an excitingly gothic atmosphere.

The special effects were once again designed by Eiji Tsuburaya and, even if this isn’t such a FX heavy film as some of Daiei’s other movies from the period, are always quite exciting. Director Kiyohiko Ushihara does a nice job of keeping the tension up and provides several interesting set pieces filled with unusual compositions which also make good use of gothic lighting.

The Rainbow Man is also quite interesting as an example of female led genre cinema as lady journalist Mimi takes the central investigator spot and is presented as a talented reporter who always seems to outsmart her male counterpart from a rival newspaper, Akashi. The police too, who are also depicted as competent and open minded, take Mimi seriously by valuing her investigative skills and her desire to protect her presumably innocent friend from harm. The Rainbow Man might not be the sci-fi/horror film it is often supposed to be, but it does provide an intriguing murder mystery with gothic overtones and light layer of genre inflected strangeness.

Can’t find any clips of the movie but here’s a recording of the main theme plus some stills:

The Haunted Castle (秘録怪猫伝, Tokuzo Tanaka, 1969)

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haunted castle 1969These days, cats may have almost become a cute character cliche in Japanese pop culture, but back in the olden days they weren’t always so well regarded. An often overlooked subset of the classic Japanese horror movie is the ghost cat film in which a demonic, shapeshifting cat spirit takes a beautiful female form to wreak havoc on the weak and venal human race. The most well known example is Kaneto Shindo’s Kuroneko though the genre runs through everything from ridiculous schlock to high grade art film.

Daiei’s 1969 genre effort The Haunted Castle (秘録怪猫伝, Hiroku Kaibyoden) sits towards the high art end but remains firmly within the realm of entertainment. Displaying the high production values the studio was known for, the film paints its 18th century tale with a plush opulence and makes fantastic use of the nighttime gloom to evoke a gothic, supernatural atmosphere which is at least extremely unsettling even if it stops short of actual terror.

As for the story, it’s another take on the classic Japanese supernatural tale The Vampire Cat of Nabeshima. Events are set in motion when blind monk Mataichirou and his sister Sayo run into their lord whilst out walking one day. Lord Tangonokami Nabeshima takes a liking to Sayo and wants to add her to his collection of concubines. He despatches an underling to ask Mataichirou about it, but Mataichirou understandably refuses, offering the excuse that Sayo is “too awkward” and the the lord wouldn’t find her very good company anyway. Nabeshima is angry at this affront to his authority and summons Mataichirou for their regular round of Go where Mataichirou once more resolutely refuses to surrender his sister. When Mataichirou realises Nabeshima and his aid are cheating, the pair argue and Nabeshima loses his temper and kills him.

This is a big problem for several reasons so they pretend not to know anything about it and dump the body in a well. Fearing discovery, they also banish the sister, Sayo, but she opts to commit harakiri and begs the weird cat that had been attached to her brother to drink her blood and become a demon to enact their revenge! Soon enough, two maids are dead in the Nabeshima household and the lord’s favourite mistress is refusing to take baths and has developed a liking for fish which she previously could not stand….

Ghost cats mostly come at night (mostly) so the majority of the film takes place in the intense darkness of the pre-electric world. The cat begins to stalk its prey quietly with only the tinkling of its ghostly bell and then tiny, bloody paw prints left as evidence of a supernatural killing. Tanaka opts for a floating, dreamlike shooting style weaving a degree of hypnotic confusion into the proceedings which also manage to keep up a high level of tension as the demonic cat spirit goes about its bloody business.

Of course, the moral of the tale is to live your life in a more altruistic manner – stop trying to take things which aren’t yours, respect the views of others, and don’t lose your temper and rashly kill people for no reason at all. All good advice there. The “hero” of the story is the more sympathetic vassal, Komori, who is trying to broker a satisfactory outcome of this complex situation right from the start, but finds himself frustrated as the servant of an unreasonable lord whose will cannot be restrained. Komori can’t avoid the supernatural retribution but manages to ride the waves well enough to ensure a morally satisfying ending where corruption is exposed and the land returned to its rightful owners rather than remaining in the hands of a lascivious usurper. It’s an old story, but a good one, and is presented with such a degree of sophistication to make The Haunted Castle one of the better horror offerings of the late ‘60s.

 

The Snake Girl and the Silver-Haired Witch (蛇娘と白髪魔, Noriaki Yuasa, 1968)

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snake girl and the white haired witchLittle Sayuri has had it pretty tough up to now growing up in an orphanage run by Catholic nuns, but her long lost father has finally managed to track her down and she’s going to able to live with her birth family at last! However, on the car ride to her new home her father explains a few things to her to the effect that her mother was involved in some kind of accident and isn’t quite right in the head. Things get weirder when they arrive at the house only to be greated by the guys from the morgue who’ve just arrived to take charge of a maid who’s apparently dropped dead!

If that weren’t enough her “mother” calls her by the wrong name and then dad gets a sudden telegram about needing to go to Africa for “several weeks” to study a new kind of snake! On her tour of the house, Sayuri finds a room full of snakes, reptiles and insects (and also for some reason a large vat of acid?!) as well as a room with a buddhist altar where the food seems to disappear just as if Buddha himself were really eating it. Eventually, Sayuri is introduced to her secret sister, Tamami, who has slight facial disfigurement and a wicked disposition which has seen her locked away from view for quite some time…..

Based on the manga by Kazuo Umezu, Snake Girl and the Silver-Haired Witch (蛇娘と白髪魔, Hebi Musume to Hakuhatsuma) is, apparently, aimed at a younger audience which explains its child’s eye view of events but the film makes no concessions to the supposed softness of little minds. With a host of surreal imagery including dream sequences full of creepy, hypnotic spirals, and moments of shocking violence such as a large frog being suddenly ripped in half right in front of Sayuri’s eyes the film certainly doesn’t stint on blood, horror and general freakiness.

Sayuri herself seems largely unperturbed by these strange goings on outside of her nightmarish serpentine visions. She seems to have been well cared for at the orphanage and is happy to have found her family rather than just to be escaping the institution. On getting “home” she does her best to fit in right away, acting politely and trying to bond with her mother even in her confused state. She even tries to get on well with her mysterious sister despite the ominous warning to keep her very existence a secret from her father. Tamami, however, is a nightmare child with homicidal tendencies who isn’t interested in playing happy families with the girl who’s come to usurp her place in the household.

There’s a little more to the set up than just snake based horror (the clue being the Silver-Haired Witch of the title) but the secondary message seems to be one of remembering that the true beauty of a person lies not in their external appearance but in the goodness of their soul. The previously deformed Tamami is later said to be looking sweeter after having “redeemed” herself and Sayuri pledges to honour Tamami’s sisterly sacrifice by always remembering to hold fast and true to the beautiful things in her own soul without being swayed by worldly charms.

Snake Girl and the Silver-Haired Witch is more of a psychological horror tale than some of the effects laden efforts of the period. However, there are a fair few practical effects on show most notably during the dream sequences – one of which sees Sayuri actually fighting a giant snake with a sword, as well as the creepy spirals and the appearance of weird vampire-like snake women, dancing oni masks and the Silver-Haired Witch herself.

A children’s film that no one in their right mind would actually show to a child, Snake Girl and the Silver-Haired Witch is a freakishly psychological horror show seen through the eyes of a little girl. Part dreamscape and part terrifying reality, the film mixes the real and the imagined with a fiendish intensity and it just goes to show that sometimes you really do need to pay attention to the strange fancies of intrepid young ladies.

This trailer doesn’t have any subtitles but it is actually quite scary…..

The Invisible Man vs The Human Fly (透明人間と蝿男, Mitsuo Murayama, 1957)

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The Invisible Man Vs the Human FlyWho would win in a fight between The Invisible Man and The Human Fly? Well, when you think about it, the answer’s sort of obvious and how funny it would be to watch probably depends on your ability to detect the facial expressions of The Human Fly, but nevertheless Daiei managed to make an entire film out of this concept which is a sort of late follow-up to their original take on Invisible Man Appears from 1949. Like that film, The Invisible Man vs The Human Fly (透明人間と蝿男, Tomei Ningen to Hae Otoko) also adopts a deadpan, straightforward tone despite its rather ridiculous premise.

Tokyo is being plagued by a series of mysterious murders occurring in broad daylight in which the victim is stabbed through the back piercing the heart yet witnesses report seeing no suspicious activity near the crime scene. Perhaps The Invisible Man did it, hahaha….However, when the man sitting next to the professor in charge of researching the “imperceptibility device” is murdered in an aircraft toilet, the police get wise to a possibly surreal explanation for these bizarre crimes. The only other evidence they have is a connection between a sleazy nightclub owner, a friend of his and one of the murdered men who briefly served together during the war, the fact that one of the victims pointed at the sky before dying, and reports of a strange buzzing sound….

Interestingly, the major viewpoint here is from the policemen investigating the case and their attempts to get their heads around this extremely unusual series of events. As often happens with revisiting a form of technology which has been used for ill in the previous picture, here the “imperceptibility device” becomes a force for good as it might be able to help the powers at be stamp out The Human Fly. This time there’s not so much of the accompanying madness which is caused by going invisible but there’s still a heavy price to be paid as no one’s figured out a way of turning back which doesn’t involve rapid death from cancer immediately afterwards.

By contrast, The Human Fly is born of a man made serum developed by Japanese mad scientists during World War II and brought back by a man who was abandoned on an island by his comrades and subsequently left to take the wrap at a war crimes tribunal. He wants to use the technology to further his own success yet has a minion carrying out most of the dirty work. The Human Fly serum does, apparently, carry a number of psychological side effects including violent impulses, paranoia and addiction.

The special effects are not quite as good as in Invisible Man Appears though the invisible antics are not the focus of the film anyway. Bizarrely, The Human Fly is just a shrunken man who is somehow able to zip about like a regular fly even though he’s still dressed in his normal business suit and keeps his arms rigidly to his sides like some kind of human torpedo. Apparently, the buzzing sound is made because of his being very small (so says science) which gets around the inconvenient truth of him not having any wings or other fly-like characteristics other than the ability of flight.

It’s all very silly, though not quite silly enough in places. For the most part, the film plays out like a regular police procedural with slight noir undertones despite the obvious strangeness of the mysteries at hand. Though there’s obviously something to be made about the origin of the Human Fly serum and the anger of the “war criminal” who feels himself betrayed by his country, it’s a fairly subtle comment on post-war resentment. However, attitudes to the practice of scientific research do seem to have shifted with the researchers investigating the imperceptibility device cast as the good guys (though no particular reason for their work is ever offered) who can be relied upon to help catch the “bad guys” who are making use of “bad technology” to do “bad things”.

A fairly solid B-movie though one which is perhaps a little too po-faced for its genretastic title, The Invisible Man vs The Human Fly is an interesting mix of noir crime thriller with a little science fiction and even a few horror trappings thrown in. Thanks to its straightforward approach it may prove a little dull for genre enthusiasts but does offer its own kind of surreal iconography and it’s difficult to forget the sight of a tiny, angry looking besuited man flying around and committing random crimes while an invisible opponent stalks him from the shadows.

 

Invisible Man Appears (透明人間現る, Nobuo Adachi, 1949)

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Invisible man appearsReleased in 1949, The Invisible Man Appears (透明人間現る, Toumei Ningen Arawaru) is the oldest extant Japanese science fiction film. Loosely based on the classic HG Wells story The Invisible Man but taking its cues from the various Hollywood adaptations most prominently the Claude Rains version from 1933, The Invisible Man Appears also adds a hearty dose of moral guidance when it comes to scientific research.

Once again the action centres around an esteemed chemist, Professor Nakazato, who has been working on a serum to render living things invisible. So far he has a sample which works on animals but is reluctant to move on to human testing as A) he hasn’t found a way to reverse the procedure, and B) there are some unpleasant side effects in which the subject becomes increasingly violent and irrational. The professor currently has two top students who are helping him towards his goal and, inconveniently, both have taken a shine to his daughter, Machiko. Half joking, the professor remarks that whoever can solve the problem first will win his daughter’s hand.

A business associate of the professor, Kawabe, is also interested in Machiko and also in the rights to the professor’s important new discovery. The professor, however, is a responsible man and refuses to sell it in case it falls into the wrong hands. Shortly after the professor is kidnapped by a gang of armed thugs who plan to use the serum to steal a set of diamonds known as The Tears of Amour.

There’s plenty of intrigue with various twists and turns to the original story which keep the viewer on their toes as they try to figure out who exactly is the invisible man and what he’s really after. Actually, the solution is sort of obvious and heavily signposted but that doesn’t make it any less fun. Kawabe is a moustache twirling villain from the get go and it’s obvious he has various things going on in the background but there’s more to the story than a greedy business man trying to manipulate everyone around him for his own gains. There’s also an interesting subplot in which the younger sister of one of the scientists is a top actress at the Takarazuka Review and turns out to have a connection to the Tears of Amour.

All of the classic B-movie hallmarks are here from the slightly ridiculous sci-fi jargon to the classic women in peril shenanigans as the serum starts to take hold and the Invisible Man becomes increasingly paranoid. There’s nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so – so it would be for science as far as the film is concerned. According to the message at the film’s beginning and end, there is no scientific discovery which is innately “evil” but each is apt to be misused. It’s not difficult to see why this would be a popular, even essential, message in the Japan of 1949 and indeed it recurs in many films of this type including, of course, the original Godzilla. The professor takes responsibility for having invented something which, although not created with evil intent, has wrought such destruction on society but finds himself with nothing left to do other than apologise.

Director Nobuo Adachi uses a lot of classic silent cinema techniques such as dissolves and montages with a fair amount of handheld camera and some location shooting (though the majority of the film is studio bound). The special effects were supervised by Eiji Tsuburaya who would later become the founding father of tokusatsu and co-creator of the Godzilla franchise and are top notch for the time period. An enjoyably silly B-movie, The Invisible Man appears is a well crafted addition to the Invisible Man corpus and a fantastic example of Daiei’s post-war genre output.

Original trailer (English subtitles) – I wish all trailers were this much fun!

Enjo (炎上, Kon Ichikawa, 1958)

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a0212807_23483150Kon Ichikawa turns his unflinching eyes to the hypocrisy of the post-war world and its tormented youth in adapting one of Yukio Mishima’s most acclaimed works, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. Inspired by the real life burning of the Kinkaku-ji temple in 1950 by a “disturbed” monk, Enjo (炎上, AKA Conflagration / Flame of Torment) examines the spiritual and moral disintegration of a young man obsessed with beauty but shunned by society because of a disability.

The film begins near its ending as a young boy with a monk’s haircut sits in a police interrogation room. He was found passed out in the woods behind a burning temple with two knife wounds on his chest plus the knife and a packet of matches lying next to him. The police would quite like to know why he, obviously, set fire to one of Japan’s most popular historical monuments, but the boy refuses to speak.

At this point we enter a series of extended flashbacks as the boy, Goichi (Raizo Ichikawa), enters the Soen Temple after his father’s death as an apprentice to the head monk there, Tayama, who was a friend of his father’s. The assistant chief monk is unhappy about this as he’s long wanted his own son to be accepted as a novice with an eye to one day inheriting the temple as the current head monk is not married and has no son of his own. When the other monks find out that the reason Goichi rarely speaks is his stammer, they begin to doubt his suitability to become a representative of their organisation.

Having grown up in a temple, Goichi idolised his father and wants nothing other than to become a monk himself. His father also loved the golden temple, “Shukaku-ji” more than anything else in the world and so it has come to symbolise a shining pillar of purity for the young Goichi who will stop at nothing to protect it. Simply being allowed to be near it is enough for him. That the temple survived the wartime air raids and subsequent chaos is nothing short of a miracle, if not proof of the gods’ love for it.

Yet, Goichi burns it down. He destroys this thing that he loved above all else, so why did he do it? The temple is too good for the world, too pure to be permitted to exist. Simply put, we don’t deserve it. One of Goichi’s earliest attempts to protect the sacred environs of the monument sees him physically push a woman away from its doors. The woman, dressed in a very modern style, had been having an argument with a GI and though it originally looks as if Goichi may come to her rescue it’s the temple he runs for. After the woman lands flat on her back, the GI thanks him for saving them “a lot of trouble with the baby”.

After having committed an unintended sin in defending his beloved temple from being defiled by an impure woman, Goichi has the urge to confess but never quite brings himself to do it. This begins to create a rift between himself and his mentor the head priest. Though the priest had been his champion, Goichi always doubted that he really saw him as a possible successor because of his stammer and only now realises that the priest has lost faith in him because of his cowardliness in not informing him of the incident with woman outside Shukaku-ji. After this slight the priest goes on supporting Goichi but not with the same warmth as before and Goichi eventually comes to resent him.

The priest has feet of clay – though it’s not unusual for priests to marry and have families, Tayama has nominally dedicated himself to the temple only, leaving himself with a problem as to its succession. However, Goichi discovers that the priest has a mistress in one of the most popular geisha houses in Kyoto. The monks are some of the wealthiest people around thanks to pimping out Shukaku-ji as a major tourist attraction and Tayama has already forgotten himself, becoming lost in the “worldliness” necessary to manage a religious establishment which is actually a lucrative business enterprise. The temple is itself defiled, prostituted, by the very people who are supposed to be protecting it and the proceeds fed back into funding an “immoral” lifestyle for its “CEO”.

This hypocrisy adds to the injustice dealt Goichi by the uncharitable nature of the monks who also, like just about everyone else, shun him because of his stammer. Though he never stammers reading the sutras and can even speak English plainly, his lifelong stutter has left him reluctant to speak and he finds only one friend at the temple. Later he meets another bad tempered man with a lame leg and the two develop an odd bond based on their shared “deformities”. Kashiwagi (Tatsuya Nakadai) is at odds with the world and encourages Goichi further onto the course of mistaken anger born of insecurity. He urges Goichi to test Tayama’s true virtue by constantly provoking him which only leads to a further fall in Goichi’s fortunes. However, Kashiwagi is also shown up for a hypocrite who exploits other people’s reactions to his disability for his own advantage.

All of Goichi’s idols fall. His parents – his mother an adulteress and his father a sickly heartbroken monk, his mentor a lecherous hypocrite and his friend a self hating coward. The world he saw in Shukaku-ji can never exist, humans are fallible and always will be including Goichi himself who is tormented by dark thoughts. An idealistic absolutist, the existence of Shukaku-ji in this imperfect world becomes to much for him to bear.

Ichikawa tells his story in a fractured, dreamlike way full of gentle dissolves as one period segues into another without warning. Goichi’s memories become more disparate and keenly focussed at the same time as his spiritual health deteriorates. Ichikawa tries to capture some of Goichi’s inner claustrophobia through the oppressive architecture of the temple environment but can’t get close to the pervading sense of dread in Mishima’s novel. Enjo is the dissection of one man’s self immolation in the fire of his own spiritual disintegration but is also a condemnation of the corrupting modern world which enables such pollution to take place and its tale of the doomed innocence of the idealist is one which is retold throughout history.

I can’t seem to find any video clips of this film, but as a side note 炎上 is current Japanese netslang for a flamewar so I did find a bunch of other “interesting” stuff.

Here’s a short video featuring clips from several of Ichikawa’s films including Enjo which you’ll be able to spot what with the temple on fire and everything…

Manji (卍, Yasuzo Masumura, 1964)

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8127Ur2xnXL._SL1500_For arguably his most famous film, 1964’s Manji (卍), Masumura returns to the themes of destructive sexual obsession which recur throughout his career but this time from the slightly more unusual angle of a same sex “romance”. However, this is less a tale of lesbian true love frustrated by social mores than it is a critique of all romantic entanglements which are shown to be intensely selfish and easily manipulated. Based on Tanizaki’s 1930s novel Quicksand, Manji is the tale of four would be lovers who each vie to be sun in this complicated, desire filled galaxy.

The story begins with a framing sequence in which Sonoko sits down with a male mentor to recount her sorry tale from some later vantage point. As she would have it, she was an unfilled, unhappy housewife taking a series of art classes when the principal of the college noticed that the face in her sketch of the Goddess of Mercy doesn’t look much like the model. Her technique is good though so he asks her why she gave her drawing a different face and who it might belong to. She tells him it’s merely an ideal and isn’t based on any real person. However, it does look quite like another, very beautiful, pupil at the school – Mitsuko, and a rumour quickly starts that the two women are lovers. Though barely knowing each other before, the pair laugh it off and decide to become friends anyway. Gradually, something more than friendship begins to grow but not everyone is being honest with each other and the added complication of the men in their lives is set to make the road even harder for Sonoko and Mitsuko’s love affair than it might otherwise be.

Sonoko narrates things from her perspective, though you get the feeling she may not be a completely reliable narrator. She seems shy, innocent, wounded though she speaks of her great tragedy with ease and a surprising frankness considering its sensitivity. The object of her obsession, Mitsuko, by contrast plays the innocent but also seems to know perfectly well what she’s doing. Manipulative in the extreme she plays each of the other three lovers off against each other in an attempt to become the centrifugal force in each of their lives. All things to all people, Mitsuko doesn’t seem to know what she wants, other than to be adored by anyone that’s around to adore her.

At the beginning of the film Mitsuko reveals that she’d been involved in marriage negotiations with a young man from a high profile family and she believes the rumours at the art school were started deliberately to try and disrupt her matrimonial ambitions. Sure enough that liaison falls through but she neglected to mention that she also has another fiancee, the slimy Watanuki, that she longs to be rid of but can’t seem to shake off. After Sonoko finds out about Watanuki, Mitsuko feigns not only a pregnancy but a bloody miscarriage to get her female lover to return to her. However, Watanuki fights back by trying to form a bilateral alliance with Sonoko to ensure Mitsuko doesn’t suddenly take up with a third party – he even gets her to sign a contract saying that she’ll help get Mitsuko to marry him and in return he won’t interfere with the two women’s relationship even once they’re married.

Sonoko’s husband completes the quartet, becoming increasingly frustrated by his wife’s infatuation with another woman, her coldness towards him and her growing boldness. Sonoko labels Kotaro cold and passionless and claims never to have enjoyed any of their married life together. She’s also been taking illegal birth control medication to avoid having children with him. Trying to be an understanding husband, Kotaro ends up tangled in a web of desire after being seduced by Mitsuko. For a time, the three form an unlikely romantic trio (with Watanuki hanging around disdainfully on the edges) though even between the three of them petty jealousies sap their strength and keep them all guessing as to the exact motives of the other pair.

Just like the four pronged arms of the manji itself, our four lovers lie in a tangled and twisted crisscross of desire, each trying to eclipse the other in the eyes of the radiant Mitsuko. Anything but merciful herself, Mitsuko adeptly plays on the insecurities of the others to keep them all dancing along to her tune. This is not a story of true love, but of misused desires, almost of the inverse of love where lust becomes a weapon of control and self satisfaction. Even at the end, Sonoko can’t decide if she’s been saved or betrayed and if what happened to her was love or a kind of madness. Whatever it was, each has paid a high price for their selfish pursuit of romance or dominance or whatever Mitsuko really represents for them (clearly not the reincarnation of the Goddess of Mercy after all). Years ahead of its time and still just as dark and fascinating as it always was, Manji is a sadly universal tale of the destructive power of love that plays almost like a ghost like story and is likely to haunt the memory long after the screen falls dark.

Manji is available with English subtitles on R2 UK DVD from Yume Pictures.

Original trailer (no subtitles)