Youth of the Beast marked a turning point in director Seijun Suzuki's career. No longer content to just crank out production-line gangster films, here Suzuki starts to assert his own voice. The plot is fairly typical for the genre: chipmunk-cheeked Jo Shishido stars as ex-cop Jo Mizuno, who muscles his way into the shadowy world of the yakuza. He ...
In Japan, the gangsters wear tattoos. A lot of tattoos. In fact, without their clothes, it almost looks as if they are wearing a particularly tight-fitting, gaudy ensemble. When two brothers who want to quit the gangster life go to work in a mine, they are harassed by the other miners because their tattoos identify them as gangsters. When the ...
Japanese auteur Seijin Suzuki directs yakuza icon Akira Kobayashi in this typically stylish tale of a feared bodyguard caught in the middle of a deadly battle between two powerful crime bosses. Katsuta (Kobayashi) works for Izu, and when overly-ambitious rival boss Yoshida makes a desperate power play, Katsuta is obligated by oath and honor to ...
Gate of Flesh is one of the earliest examples of the sado-masochistic soft-core sex films called pinku eiga that would grow by the 1970s into one of Japan's largest, and domestically most popular, genres. Seijun Suzuki directed this gritty, stridently anti-American account of prostitution, set in the black markets and rubble of Tokyo during the ...
Seijun Suzuki directed this hard-hitting account of a woman who volunteers to serve as a "comfort woman" (prostitute to the Japanese army) at the Manchurian front in 1937. Harumi (Yukimo Nogawa) is desperate to get out of Japan to escape the memory of a doomed romance. She offers to serve the Army in Manchuria, where the sadistic Lieutenant Narita ...
Japanese cult director Seijun Suzuki's combination sequel to and remake of his 1967 gangster film classic Branded To Kill stars Makiko Esumi as Miyuki Minazuki, AKA "the Stray Cat," a beautiful female assassin. She is number three in the hierarchy of killers in her criminal organization at the beginning of the film, but soon a battle breaks out ...
Seijun Suzuki changed his name from "Seitaro Suzuki" with this lurid crime film, one of over two dozen he directed before moving into the big leagues with Kanto Mushuki (1963). Mari Shiraki (Rajo To Kenju) stars as a gangster's girlfriend who is pushed into joining his diamond-smuggling operation. Yoshi Taranda co-stars in this hard-boiled ...
The final film in his acclaimed Taisho trilogy, maverick filmmaker Seijun Suzuki directs his bizarre, hallucinatory tale about the tortured inner world of famed 1920s painter Yumeji Takehisa. The film opens with Takehisa (played by former rock star Kenji Sawada) at a garden party, entranced by a woman in a gloriously red kimono. He's utterly ...
The inner workings of the human psyche are featured in this study of relationships between different leading characters. The action weaves around playwright Matsuzaki (Yusaku Matsuda) -- who is sleeping with Shinako (Michio Okusu), a married woman -- and his other "lover," Ine (Eriko Kasuda), a fairly corporeal spirit. The film is set in 1926, ...
This is an enigmatic and challenging film in many ways. It is set in the 1930s and colored with nuances of the strange and sinister, one component of the Nazis' "world view" at that time. Japan's connections to Germany during this period leading up to World War II are brought forward in the German title, the name of a song by Pablo Sarasate that ...
Tokyo Drifter stands with Branded to Kill as one of the best-known and most acclaimed films of Seijun Suzuki, one of Japan's most talented maverick directors. A colorful riot of an action drama, Tokyo Drifter, like many of Suzuki's films, transforms a standard gangster film plot into a vehicle for his own loopy brand of filmmaking, featuring ...
A delirious fever dream of a film, Seijun Suzuki's Branded to Kill takes the familiar elements of "B"-movie crime drama and transforms them into something outrageously bizarre and unexpectedly poetic. The film's story centers on Hanada, a.k.a. "No. 3 Killer," the third-best hit man in Japanese organized crime. Near the top of his game, his ...
In this sharp satire from acclaimed Japanese director Seijun Suzuki, Hideki Takahashi plays Kiroku, a middle-school student who finds himself troubled by an obsessive lust for the virginal Michiko (Junko Asano), the daughter of the family with whom he boards. But Kiroku soon discovers the perfect solution to thoughts of sex -- violence. One of ...
Japanese director Seijun Suzuki solidified his growing cult following with this offbeat adaptation of Haruhiko Ooyabu's crime novel. Jo Shishido stars as Det. Tajima, a smug investigator who nabs a pair of criminal gangs with flamboyant aplomb while the police remain baffled. Suzuki treats the rather hoary plotline as an excuse for dark-humored ...
A young model discovers the dark side of fame in this grim tale fom cult film director Seijun Suzuki (Tokyo Drifter). When the lovely Reiko (Yoko Shiraki) begins posing for a golfing fashion magazine, her sexy, unique look --a skimpy bathing suit and a nine iron -- draws tons of attention from new fans. Soon enough, one of these devoted followers ...
Veteran director Seijun Suzuki (Branded to Kill) takes a new direction with the colorful operetta-fairy tale, Princess Raccoon. When Azuchi Momoyama (Mikijiro Hira), the master of Grace Castle, is told by his soothsayer, Virgen the Old Maid (Saori Yuki) that his son, Amechiyo (Joe Odagiri), will soon usurp his place as "the fairest of them all," ...
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