Tag: Japanese Cinema
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Evil Of Dracula (1974)
Evil Of Dracula (1974; Chi o Sū Bara) is a Japanese cinematic riff on the Hammer Horror formula. It’s your basic Dracula story, this time imagined as taking place in an all-girls residential college out in the countryside. A new hunky psychology teacher, Professor Shiraki (Toshio Kurosawa) arrives by train and becomes acquainted with the… Read.
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Drunken Angel (1948)
Past Movie Squad reviewer Paul Grace wrote a recommendation of Drunken Angel (1948) for an old issue of the VHS Tracking zine. Directed by Akira Kurosawa, I only realised after I had watched it that it was his first collaboration with actor Toshiro Mifune. While he’s always been a handsome, attractive man to me, Mifune… Read.
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Deadly Fight In Hiroshima (1973)
Another Lewis Rice O’Donnell recommendation, The Yakuza Papers are a five film series of gangster movies directed by Kinji Fukasaku (Battle Royale) based on news stories and journalists covering the post-war era. Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Deadly Fight In Hiroshima (1973) aka Hiroshima Death Match is the second movie in the series, and our… Read.
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The Sword Of Doom (1966)
All I knew about the Japanese movie The Sword Of Doom (1966) was the iconic image of a samurai in the middle distance of a forest, submerged in fog and surrounded by bodies felled by his sword. I didn’t realise that the film’s main character was an embodiment of evil. Ryunosuke Tsukue (Tatsuya Nakadai) is… Read.
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Red Beard (1965)
Akira Kurosawa’s Red Beard (1965; Akahige) might intimidate with its three hour length. But this drama, the last film Kurosawa would make in black and white, and with regular collaborator and star Toshiro Mifune, is a beautiful, moving experience. Set in the 19th century in Koshikawa, it is basically a medical drama focused on the… Read.
VHS Tracking 