Kyoji Murayama
2021Ôsen chitai
Teruo Ishii
Shigeru Amachi, Yōko Mihara
From the king of Japanese exploitation films comes a criminal drama told in a semi-documentary fashion. The murder of the chief official of Kobe city's Customs triggers an investigation of a prostitution ring called the 'Yellow Line' that sells Japanese women. A hired assasin is betrayed by his organization, and kidnaps a woman who happens to be the girlfriend of a newspaper reporter.
Yellow Line
Black Line
Teruo Ishii
Shigeru Amachi, Utako Mitsuya
Freelance reporter “Scoop” Machida is hot on the trail of a prostitution ring called the Black Line, when he is framed for the murder of a young woman. Forced to clear his own name, the handsome journalist sinks deeper into the Black Line’s rotten swamp of drugs, prostitution, and murder and finds unexpected help in Maya, a steamy female gambler familiar with the neon-lit streets, shadowy alleyways, and seedy nightclubs he must navigate. The closest film in the Line series to classic American film noir, Ishii’s Black Line is a pulpy assortment of crime film conventions including the starkly expressionistic black and white cinematography by Jûgyô Yoshida, a jazzy music score by Michiaki Watanabe, and a sleazy screenplay by Ishii and Ichirô Miyagawa.
Black Line
明治天皇と日露大戦争
Kunio Watanabe
Kanjūrō Arashi, Kusuo Abe
Meiji Tenno portrays the buildup to the Russo-Japan War. In addition to showing the political events that led to war, it also shows the era from the story of a farm family in rural Japan that sends their son off to war. As such, it could be considered an anti-war movie, showing how, while war is devised by governments, the people do not really understand what war is, and its combatants often do not know what they are fighting for.
Emperor Meiji and the Great Russo-Japanese War
怪談本所七不思議
Gorô Kadono
Jūzaburō Akechi, Namiji Namiura
A samurai rescues a mischievous tanuki from hunters and sets it free. When the samurai's wastrel son hatches a plot to kill his father for his fortune, the magical tanuki is determined to protect its rescuer.
Ghost Stories of Wanderer at Honjo
憲兵とバラバラ死美人
Kyōtarō Namiki
Shoji Nakayama, Shigeru Amachi
The year is 1937, and it has been six months since the Sendai Infantry left for Manchuria. The rotted corpse of a young woman is found at the bottom of a well, but her face and limbs are gone. The military police begin an investigation and search fervently for the person responsible, but they can't even determine the victim's identity, much less find any clues. However, the incident is made public when newspapers give wide coverage to the story, so Staff Sergeant Kosaka is dispatched from Tokyo to solve the case. Eventually, General Tsunekichi is taken into custody by local infantrymen because of the testimony of another unit, but the spirit of the dead woman appears before Staff Sergeant Kosaka, who continues to investigate on his own...
The Military Policeman and the Dismembered Beauty
怪談鏡ケ淵
Masaki Mōri
Noriko Kitazawa, Shōzaburō Date
A store manager named Kinbei becomes enraged when the owners of the store decide to hand it down to an adopted son instead of him. He hatches a plot to murder them all, but as it turns out he has done this sort of thing before. As bodies pile up in the nearby Kagami Pond, a ghostly vengeance is about to be unleashed.
The Ghosts of Kagami Pond
