Black Tight Killers (1966)

Hondo (Akira Kobayashi), a battlefield photographer, meets cute with Yoriko (Chieko Matsubara), a stewardess, and the two decide to spend some time together.  Little does Hondo know that Yoriko is wanted by no less than four nefarious groups (three of them straight up gangsters plus the titular ninja team) for information she may have in regards to her father and his legacy.

Yasuharu Hasebe’s Black Tight Killers (aka Ore Ni Sawaru To Abunaize aka Don’t Touch Me I’m Dangerous aka If You Touch Me Danger) is a film that I’m sure people would claim owes a ton to the work of Seijun Suzuki, especially Branded to Kill and Tokyo Drifter, if they didn’t know any better.  Thing is, Drifter was released the same year as this one, and Branded was released the following year.  But the films do bear a striking resemblance in terms of style, if not necessarily in their approach to narrative.  Black Tight Killers is much more traditional in story structure like the more nailed down rock ‘n roll used in the film while its aesthetic is pure artsy freestyle jazz (also used in the film).  This combination makes the film a little more approachable than some of Suzuki’s more outré work.  Black Tight Killers is a hepcat’s action fantasy with Kobayashi (one of Nikkatsu Studios’ “Diamond Guys”) as its ginchy ring leader.  The film is full-on garish excess most of the time, experimenting with form and directly applying art to create a unique cinematic world (something which was very much on the rise in Japan at the time, I believe).  For example, the rear-projected background in a night driving scene is tinted dark blue, but when the car enters a tunnel, it changes to orange-yellow.  A street at night (filmed on a set) is nothing but black silhouettes of buildings, the only details the bright neon signage of the clubs that litter the city.  A dream sequence becomes an extended fantasy sequence, as Yoriko is chased across sets decorated with nothing other than the saturated colors of their boundaries.  

This unorthodox approach gives way to a more exploitative fashion in the actual narrative.  The gangsters are the kind that George Reeves’ Superman would have burst through a wall to thwart.  They’re all ugly as sin and mean as wolverines.  They tie up, strip, and torture the women in the film at several points.  One female is chained up and painted silver (the paint will suffocate her, of course).  One female is chained up over a pool of water and wired with electrodes.  You get the picture.  More than these, however, it’s the Black Tights who have the wildest moments imaginable.  Their form of Ninjitsu is idiosyncratic, to say the least.  They employ weapons such as razor sharp tape measures (yes, really), ninja chewing gum bullets (yes, really), and 45 RPM records that they hurl like shuriken (yes, really).  Their actual physical techniques extend to voice impressions, the requisite kicking, punching, and thigh chokeholds, as well as something called the Octopus Pot technique, about which I will say no more so you can discover its glories for yourself.  Hasebe combines forthright action tropes with the more abstracted artistry of this universe, and the two produce a quasi-freeform union that carries the film along nicely.  This marriage is, very arguably, no better displayed than in the death scene of a character towards the film’s end.  As the character dies, a pool of brilliant blue paint pours into frame on the ground below, not only an artificial representation of said character’s blood, but also a statement that this character is as much a work of art as any of the ultra-stylized settings we’ve seen.

So let’s discuss some of these characters.  Our male lead, Hondo, is part womanizer, part man of action, all casual attitude.  He’s intended to be a groovy daredevil, but his charms are so slight, he’s practically a non-entity.  Even more of a cipher is Yoriko, a quintessential damsel in distress.  She has no personality to speak of except that she loves Hondo for some inexplicable reason (this does have a nice payoff at the end, but it’s a bright spot on a dull polish job), and her secret is what drives the plot.  Fused together, the leads barely provide enough interest to buoy the film above drowning level.  The gangsters, as previously mentioned, are the standard issue thugs we’ve come to know and loathe from movies of this time and place.  They are skanky, underhanded, and visually striking.  And that’s about it.  The real core of the film is the Black Tights, yet even they are hardly distinguishable from one another except in the looks department (my favorite is Natsuko [Kaoru Hama], but that’s neither here nor there), partially because they dress the same (down to the Red Star Lilies they all wear on their leather coats), partially because none of them really has a personality to differentiate one from another (while they each get individual scenes to alternately antagonize and fall in love with Hondo, the only one of these that stands out for very specific reasons is the one with Akiko [Akemi Kita], but all of them are more situation-based than character-based).  They have a purpose.  This, to my mind, is the point.  The Black Tights aren’t meant to be different people but one (moreso than the indistinct villains), a sort of gestalt representing where they came from, and that representation represents the demarcation between noble and ignoble, in light of certain events.

In all honesty, Black Tight Killers is nothing to write home about if taken strictly on the virtues of its story.  It’s as by the numbers as these things get (with the very slight exception of old coot Momochi’s [Bokuzen Hidari] underserved Ninja Research Society).  The action is fairly well-handled, though some of the hand-to-hand stuff involving the Black Tights looks like they’re playing rather than fighting (come to think of it, that might not be such a bad idea).  Truly, the film lives or dies on its style, and in that department, it excels.  Whether they’re dancing at one of the local go-go clubs or picking fights with guys twice their size, the Black Tights exemplify the Swingin’ Sixties in Japan about as well as any other pop-art-influenced film does.  The chances Hasebe takes as to how he tells his tale (actually, one based on a Michio Tsuzuki novel, but why quibble?) are what sets the film apart marvelously, like the bright orange flowers of the ninja femmes set off the basic black leather canvases of their apparel.

MVT:  The eponymous ladies are both the show and the showstopper.

Make or Break:  If you can’t make it through the dance sequence playing behind the opening credits, you won’t like this movie.  If you do like it, you’ll know you’re right where you need to be.

Score:  7/10   

Curse of the Undead: Yoma (1998)

“In the age of wars, innocent civilians’ blood sank into the earth.”  Ninja Hikage (Kenyu Horiuchi) and Marou (Kaneto Shiozawa) stand on a desolate battlefield as men strip the arrows from the scattered corpses.  Marou has a bit of an episode and runs off after smooshing the sodden ground between his fingers.  Shortly thereafter, the leader of their clan is murdered, and Hikage is dispatched to track down Marou, who may or may not have had something to do with it.  Meanwhile, all manner of demons (read: yoma) are appearing, feasting on human beings and trying to take over the world.  More or less.

Takashi Anno’s Curse of the Undead: Yoma (aka Blood Reign: Curse of the Yoma) is a two episode OVA (Original Video Animation) based on a manga by Kei Kusunoki (presented outwardly as one film for its video release [at least in America], though it’s really just the two programs [including opening and closing credits] shown back to back, but since I watched it, I’m counting it as one).  Consequently, I would bet my bottom dollar that this anime is a massive abbreviation of the original story (one of the things I always found fascinating about adaptations of manga, one of the most decompressed storytelling styles in the world, is whether they leave out large chunks of the story [usually things like exposition] or if they just go off in a direction inspired by the original; for example, Osamu Tezuka’s Akira manga is over two thousand pages long, while the anime is a little over two hours, but it’s still a superlative adaptation [it doesn’t hurt any that the original artist was also the film’s director]; I’m hard-pressed to say which version I prefer).  Marou is introduced with nary a word spoken, and from the way he acts at the opening, we might be led to think that he’s the protagonist.  Instead, he’s the villain, but even this isn’t made clear until much further down the road, even though it’s not treated like a big reveal.  We’re given glimpses of Marou and Hikage playing as children, but it’s always the same scene, and nothing of any consequence happens in it to either move the story forward or provide any insight.  This is especially confounding, because this scene is in heavy rotation in the film.  The anime leaps forward in chunks of time (hours, days, years), occasionally making light attempts at some sort of characterization, very little of which has any tangible impact.

The film is ostensibly about the bonds of friendship and how they are torn asunder.  Nevertheless, the relationship between Hikage and Marou has no substance to it; only hints at subtext.  As a result, it makes it difficult to invest any sort of emotion in the proceedings.  It doesn’t really help any that these two characters never have any meaty interactions after the chase is on, so outside of the constant flashbacks to the pair as kids, the only sense of weight in regards to their friendship comes in the form of Hikage’s obsession with finding Marou.  He is single-minded to the point of disobeying his boss, in fact.  Simultaneously, the relationship between Hikage and Aya (played by Hiromi Tsuru and Mina Tomunaga) is meant to bestow some alternative to the platonic love between Hikage and Marou.  I should state here (and you may have picked up the hint from the actor credits) that Aya is, technically, two characters.  The first is a simple villager with a death wish.  The second is a fellow (novice) ninja who follows along on Hikage’s journey (perhaps a death wish of another kind).  Both love Hikage in an immediate sense that never rang true for me, but when time is of the essence, best to cut to the chase, as it were.  Hikage is injured from an earlier fight with his friend, causing him to wear a bandage over his right eye for part of the story.  Likewise, the first Aya’s face is disfigured on the left side.  There is a circularity to this visual distinction that I quite like, but I won’t get into details for fear of spoiling anything.  The point is, everyone in the film is damaged (including Marou) by the war-ravaged world they inhabit, and the struggle to connect with another person is, not only the most important thing in their lives, but also the most damning.  That’s not to say there isn’t a kind of happy ending to the story, but it is more a silver cloud with a grey lining than the opposite.

This anime, to absolutely no one’s surprise, is loaded with elements of body horror.  Corpses are found disemboweled.  Throats are slit with a gush of arterial spray that would make Tomisaburo Wakayama green with envy.  Innards are shredded via oral application of Hikage’s nifty, Wolverine-esque claw gauntlet.  Yoma erupt through the flesh of their human forms to showcase the corrupt monstrosities hidden within.  And this is, pardon the pun, the real meat of the film.  The Japanese absolutely love showcasing grotesque, slimy, hirsute things tearing through and transmogrifying humanity down to its core, and this speaks of a commentary (intentional or not) on the perverting of human beings by the world they inhabit (which, by extension, we read as our world).  Very rarely are the protagonists in horror anime left unscathed by this condition, and Curse of the Undead: Yoma is no exception.  Here the criticism is on war and what it does to both the participants and the bystanders.  The war between humans becomes a war with yoma.  Still, the humans continue their own conflicts, even drawing the yoma into it directly, further degrading situations and characters already at base levels.  This theme is certainly nothing new in anime (or film in general), but it neither adds to nor detracts from this particular narrative.

Ultimately, and despite my criticisms, I found myself enjoying Curse of the Undead: Yoma.  It moves along at a nice enough clip, the creature designs are interesting if somewhat uninspired, and there’s action enough to spice up the basic story the filmmakers seem to go to great lengths to ignore.  This wouldn’t be a very good introduction to anime for some people, because it does have some of the more impenetrable anime elements non-Japanese viewers may find a bit too demanding.  That said, I found myself going with the flow, and the runtime passed by breezily.  I can think of worse ways to curse a film than damning it with faint praise (see what I did there?).

MVT:  There is a foreboding atmosphere at work in the film that maintains interest through the audience’s curiosity as to who will fall the hardest and how far they will drop?

Make or Break:  When the first big boss monster shows up and tells Hikage what the plot is (which is just as subject to change as a pair of socks), you’ll know whether the trip has been worth it for you or not.

Score: 6.5/10     

Ninja Wars (1982)

**SPOILERS**

The 1985 video game The Legend of Kage is one of my favorites of all time.  It’s an extremely simple game: You run around forests and castles, killing monks and ninja with your double blades and shuriken until you’re done.  About as basic a video game premise as you’ll ever get.  I don’t think that I would love it as much as I do had I not seen Kosei Saito’s Ninja Wars (aka Iga Ninpocho aka Death of a Ninja aka Black Magic Wars) a few years prior, because the game bears a lot of the touches that make the film interesting.  The Legend of Kage has firebreathing monks with those face-covering, conical straw hats we’ve seen so very many times.  Its main character isn’t dressed like what Americans back then had become used to as the visual idea of a ninja from such magazines as…well…Ninja.  Kage wears a short tunic, and he has long hair and no mask of which to speak.  All the characters can leap almost the entire length and breadth of the screen.  There’s a princess to be rescued from the evil bosses.  There’s a temple that has to be assailed in order to do this.  The game stands out for its uniquely Japanese fantasy elements, in my opinion.  Sure, there were games that had similar components (if there were a video game trope more profligate than musclebound badasses rescuing someone/taking revenge, it was ninja/martial artists rescuing someone/taking revenge), but none harkened back so specifically to Ninja Wars (and bear in mind, up to that moment in time, I was only familiar with the works of Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris, and Shaw Bros) in my adolescent brain to the point that I used to believe/fantasize that the game was adapted from the film (which is itself adapted from a 1964 novel by Futaro Yamada).  And still, the film is one I find extremely difficult to both discuss and to love outside of certain facets.    

Try to follow along.  Evil sorcerer/blank-faced cackler/creepy uncle Kashin Koji (Mikio Narita) prophecies to gormless pawn/power-hungry lord/architect(?) Donjo (Akira Nakao) that whosoever wins the heart of the beautiful Ukyodayu (Noriko Watanabe), who is currently married to the even more gormless Lord Miyoshi (Noboru Matsuhashi), will hold the world in his hands.  Easy enough, right?  Kashin gives Donjo five “Devil Monks” (a blind one, a skinny one, a giant one, a woman one, and an acid-spitting (?) one who looks like the Asian Avery Schreiber) to help him achieve this goal by creating a love potion.  Meanwhile, young ninja in love Jotaro (Hiroyuki Sanada) and Kagaribi (Watanabe in a dual role) profess their love for each other and perfect their ninja clan’s Crescent Dagger Technique.  It turns out, Kagaribi is Ukyodayu’s twin sister (separated because she’s Christian[?]), and she’s kidnapped by the monks so they can extract her tears for the potion.  Killing herself by cutting off her own head, the monks take the head from Donjo’s courtesan/wife (?) Isaribi (Jun Miho), plant it on Kagaribi’s body, and rename her Onibi (also Lady Hellfire).  Things escalate from there.

The primary driving force behind Ninja Wars is the conflict between lust and love.  Donjo lusts for power, and thus, he lusts for Ukyodayu (even though she’s gorgeous, we never quite get the feeling that Donjo is interested in her as anything other than a means to an end).  He built Miyoshi’s castle, and that symbol of power and achievement is the chief characteristic of Donjo’s character.  Donjo is allowed to have sex with Onibi like a blowup doll (thankfully, we never see this to my recollection).  The monks are also filled with lust.  One of them rapes Onibi in order to extract her tears for the love potion.  They test out the potion on one of Donjo’s servants who immediately desires the blind monk, exposes her breasts to him, and leads him upstairs for a quick one (he gladly follows along, toying with her boobs the whole way).  The female monk (I think) disguises herself as Ukyodayu (I think) and seduces Miyoshi in order to ensorcell him.  

Conversely, Jotaro and Kagaribi have a very pure, even chaste, love for each other.  After Kagaribi is killed, this love transfers to Ukyodayu in a damsel in distress kind of way.  It’s their love that generates the tension of the story, and their ultimate decision at the film’s finale is the off-center (but still somehow fitting) punctuation to this expression.  Ukyodayu is the center point between Jotaro’s love and Donjo’s lust (let’s never mind that both men more or less use her as a tool to fulfill their own needs, and even though she chooses Jotaro, there’s no real reason for it other than that he’s the good guy).  Between these two extremes is Shinzaemon (Sonny Chiba), master of the Yagyu Clan.  Shinzaemon knows that Kashin is evil, and anything he orchestrates is “wrong.”  He doesn’t lust for anything other than justice, and he is on the side of the young lovers, because they’re virtuous and because their love is “correct.”  The few times Shinzaemon shows up onscreen, it is to save Jotaro and Ukyodayu’s bacon and encourage them to continue along their righteous path.  Thus, anytime the villains are onscreen, we know we’re likely to get something skanky, and anytime the good guys are onscreen, we know we’re going to get something puppy-love-esque.

There is a religious theme running through the film, focusing on the worthiness of Christianity in much the same way as just about every film dealing with Satanism/the occult does.  The monks, and by association Donjo, are either atheists, Satanists, or pagans (maybe all three from the way they act).  They serve the flagitious Kashin, who is portrayed as a quasi-omnipotent demigod, though it’s never stated that he’s anything more than a very powerful human.  The centerpiece of the film takes place at a Buddhist temple, which the monks attack during some ceremony, burning it to the ground (this culminates, in slow motion, with the head of the giant statue of Buddha crashing to the ground).  So, even Buddhism isn’t sufficient to defeat this evil.  Kagaribi (and, consequently, Jotaro) is a Christian, and she wears a crystal crucifix around her neck.  This crucifix inexplicably transfers to Ukyodayu (There may be two crystal crucifixes; Regardless, I thought Ukyodayu wasn’t raised Christian, but all things considered, this could just as easily be a further statement on the power of Christianity in the film).  The crucifix burns Onibi as she attempts to beguile Jotaro.  Ukyodayu winds up on an actual cross set atop a pyre in Kashin’s netherworld/otherworld, ready to sacrifice herself in fire.  Jotaro’s decision to join her is simultaneously an expression of their love and an expression of the messianic dimension of Christianity.  That this act touches Kashin is a testament to the film’s perspective on the subject, in my opinion.

For as much as there is in this film to admire (and the action sequences are sufficiently large scale, well-photographed, and well-choreographed), it really is a hot mess at the end of the day.  This is the sort of film where characters will decide to do something, ostensibly in order to achieve their goals, but really it’s just to have another weird sequence happen.  None of the characters are interesting other than the monks, and even they are only interesting for their peculiarities.  The plot is a massive game of “Hot Potato” that never pays off.  It only exists to bring the characters in proximity to one another.  Ninja Wars is a labyrinth of a film, its convolutions leading to either dead ends or cliff drops.  And like a rat in a lab maze, the viewer is prompted through the movie with the promise of a piece of cheese at the end.  The only problem is that the egress of the maze just leads to another maze, and any cheese there is to be had is picked up, perfectly by happenstance, at random intervals throughout.  So, you still get some rewards, but you’re never fully satisfied when it’s all done.

MVT:  For all its myriad issues, the inventiveness and insanity of Ninja Wars really needs to be seen to be believed.

Make or Break:  The assault on the Buddhist temple, while admittedly a tad overlong, really is wildly impressive on a variety of levels.

Score:  6.75/10