Motoyoshi Oda
1910 - 1973Motoyoshi Oda (July 21, 1910; Moji City, Fukuoka – October 21, 1973; Tokyo) was a Japanese film director.
An English major who graduated from Waseda University, one of Japan's most prestigious, in 1935, Motoyoshi Oda was promptly accepted into the directors' program at Tokyo's P.C.L. (Photo Chemical Laboratories, a film company later incorporated into Toho Studios). He studied under director Satsuo Yamamoto, as did Akira Kurosawa, Ishirō Honda, and Senkichi Taniguchi. When the latter two trainees were drafted into Japan's war in China, Oda found his career accelerated. He was promoted to director in 1940 with Song of Kunya, after a relatively scant few years of training. Perhaps because of this relative lack of training, and certainly because Oda was not drafted into the army, P.C.L. and Toho kept Oda going as a maker of programmers - trivial pictures that had to be made in order to keep product flowing into the theaters, but which offered little time or room for artistic achievement.
Probably his most distinguished credits are Lady From Hell (1949, based on a Kurosawa script), Tomei Ningen a 1954 Japanese horror classic inspired by The Invisible Man, a follow-up to his earlier 1954 film Ghost Man. The only film he made ever to be shown outside Japan was the second Godzilla film, Godzilla Raids Again (1955), released in the United States as Gigantis, the Fire Monster. Toho insisted that Oda direct as many as seven movies a year, knowing that he could be trusted to deliver them on time. Over his entire career, Motoyoshi Oda directed fifty movies, not to mention his work as assistant director and second-unit direction on Ishiro Honda's Eagle of the Pacific (1953). No credits are available for Oda during the last 15 years of his life, after 1958.
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地獄の貴婦人
Motoyoshi Oda
Eitarō Ozawa, Ichirō Ryūzaki
Three and a half years after Japan was bombed, the tax authorities organized the T-Men. Nango is in love with a girl called Mibu, and the two are against the T-Men organization. Mibu whats to kill all of the T-Men one-by-one.
Lady From Hell
ゴジラの逆襲
Motoyoshi Oda
Hiroshi Koizumi, Setsuko Wakayama
Two fishing scout pilots make a horrifying discovery when they encounter a second Godzilla alongside a new monster named Anguirus. Without the weapon that killed the original, authorities attempt to lure Godzilla away from the mainland. But Anguirus soon arrives and the two monsters make their way towards Osaka as Japan braces for tragedy.
Godzilla Raids Again
赤い手の娘達
Motoyoshi Oda
Kimiko Sakuramachi, Heihachirô Ôkawa
The title might sound shocking, but the red hands mean, the hands which drag fishnets. Ohama, 15 or 16 years old girl lost her family and lived alone in a fishermen's village. She is a strong-minded girl and very popular among young children. I guess that this story is one of the origins of girl's manga in the 1950s in which I belonged to the first generation of Japanese story manga.
Mother of the Red Hands
