Daimajin Strikes Again

Collateral Daimajin

Daimajin Strikes Again
(aka Daimajin gyakushû)
1966 Japan Directed by Kazuo Mori
Daiei Studios/Mill Creek Entertainment Blu Ray Zone A

Well, here we have the third and final entry in the series of Daimajin movies which were released three months apart in Japan in 1966, with this final one at cinemas in December of that year. However, as far as the titles go on the US releases... it’s a mess. This one never got released in the cinema in the US but the English title was originally called Wrath Of Daimajin (and is listed as such on the IMDB) but that was the Japanese translation of the second film. The Japanese translation of the third film was Return of Daimajin... except that title is what the US market called the second film so... I’m going to go with Mill Creek’s release title for this one, Daimajin Strikes Again.

The opening title card is a thing of beauty with loads of birds being released behind the cool Japanese font followed by sparkly, glittery things which I am assuming is supposed to be gunpowder... I’ll get to why a little later. However, the sequence immediately following the title card makes absolutely no sense with the rest of the movie and I can only assume it was included by the film’s producers because they felt there wasn’t enough of Daimajin in the movie (something which I would argue is the case for all three films, actually).

In this opening, Daimajin in already up and about from the start and we see bits of him such as his arm or maybe a leg (no full body shots or face until the last little bit of the film) as he wanders around causing avalanches, floods and various other ‘natural disasters’ such as earthquakes and we see various people huddling in terror and proclaiming that “God must be furious!” as their dwellings are wrecked and they are made homeless. This is followed by a voice over narrative moment saying that these stories take place in a time when people thought their mountain Gods caused such natural disasters. This is curious for three reasons... 1. We have just seen that Daimajin, their mountain God, did indeed cause these disasters... 2. This behaviour is completely at odds with the avenging spirit we know him to be from the previous two movies (and this one, as it turns out) and... 3. This sequence and its consequences play absolutely no part in the subsequent film. It’s a complete non-sequitur and this makes me assume it was placed here to start the film off with a bit of spectacle since, in all honesty, there’s not much action in this movie, which seems to be aimed squarely at a young, family audience (which makes the final, bloody denouement all the more curious, to be honest).

So then we get into the main story, such as it is, with a dying man returning to his village from the mountains. He tells a story of all the men folk being attacked and abducted by a bunch of evil samurais to be used as slave labour in Hell Valley. The remaining villagers want to go and rescue their people but the only way through to Hell Valley is across the God’s home, Majin Mountain and, if it snows, then anyone stuck up there is not expected to survive.

Meanwhile, while the adults are procrastinating, a trio of young children leave the village and decide to go up Majin Mountain to Hell Valley and rescue their fathers from the evil samurai. Now, the fathers in Hell Valley seem to be involved in carrying dry sulphur from the region and are said to be aiding their captors to build ‘a construction’ which will help them invade and conquer any surrounding villages. However, it’s really not very clear at all, throughout the entire movie, just what the heck it is they are supposed to be constructing but, since there are lots of explosions when things get knocked over in the final sequence of this movie, I can only assume it’s something to do with gunpowder manufacture but... it’s not made clear in the movie to be honest. At least not in the subtitling.

Much of the rest of the movie is taken up with some great shots of the trio of kids climbing up and around the mountain and some gorgeous compositions and atmospheres are created with the three kids in the foregrounds pitched against the angles made by the natural landscape behind them. It reminded me a little of the astronaut walk seen the year after in the original Planet Of The Apes, in some parts. After a while, a fourth kid who wanted to come also joins them and we get more of the same. At one point, where the kids have to sneak past an old lady who says they can’t go up the mountain, we are reminded that folk in this film think that Daimajin is a “scary, wild mountain God”. When the kids come to the giant stone God, the atmosphere gets dark and windy for a little while and we are then told that Daimajin’s ‘avatar’ is a hawk, with which he listens in and watches the progress of the kids throughout the movie.

Then we get three of the evil samurai who go onto the mountain to try and find the villager who escaped at the start of the movie and they then start to go after the kids... who seem to outsmart them at every turn. For a while there, it all gets a bit ‘Home Alone on a mountain’ to be honest. However, things get hairy for the kids after one of them hurts his leg and so they construct a raft (somehow) and try and float it down to Hell Valley... but of course it cracks up on rocks and, with all the finality that Japanese movies of the time seemed to never lack, the kid with the dodgy leg dies and floats off down the river.

Then one of the kids has a dream about being lost in the snow with Daimajin’s hawk avatar tracking him. Sure enough, it starts snowing on their second night on the mountain and they get into all kinds of trouble. Then the three samurai find them and are about to shoot them all when the hawk avatar kills the three samurai by clawing up their faces but... not before the hawk is shot. After it dies, one of the kids buries its bleeding body, says a prayer to Daimajin and jumps into the thick, snowy ice as a self sacrifice to the mountain God’s spirit. At this point, the titular giant statue starts bleeding down its visage and then does that thing with its hands in front of its face as a travelling matt, which it always does to reveal its usual, “angry as f*ck, I’m so pi**ed off I’m going to kill all the villains in ways so not fit for the general family audience movie this is supposed to be” face.

And then we’re in the final 10 - 15 minutes of the movie as Daimajin goes on his angry rampage, first turning golden and rescuing the kid who just sacrificed himself, not to mention resurrecting his hawk, before stomping around in the evil samurai’s valley and killing all the villains as they are about to throw the peaceful villagers into a lake of sulphur. And it gets pretty violent. Explosions of sparkly bits light up as he knocks over buildings (for some reason so... gunpowder, I guess?) and he steps on one guy so hard that blood comes out of his mouth. He then takes the main villain in his hand, grabs his giant stone sword and runs the guy through with it against a rock... before pulling the sword out so the victim can fall into his own sulphur lake. And that’s pretty much where the movie ends, as the grateful villagers prey to him and he returns to his stony face form before a nice effect has him dissipating in the wind as snow. It’s a nice end to a pretty enjoyable trilogy and, like the previous two (each by a different director), I thoroughly enjoyed this one. Just a shame no more Daimajin movies were made after this although I believe a TV show was released in 2010. Who knows, maybe we’ll get to see a subtitled release of that over here someday. In the meantime, Mill Creeks stunning US zoned Blu Ray of the trilogy is the absolutely best way to go if you want to catch these great movies. Highly recommended.


Daimajin at NUTS4R2

Daimajin      

Return Of Daimajin   

Daimajin Strikes Again

The Tale OF Zatoichi Continues (Zoku Zatôichi Monogatari)

Ichi keen!

The Tale Of Zatoichi Continues 
(Zoku Zatôichi Monogatari)
1962 Japan
Directed by Kazuo Mori
Daiei/Criterion Collection 
DVD Region 1/BluRay Region A 

I mentioned in my review of the first film in this series that, at the end, Zatoichi leaves his cane sword behind in the town in which he reluctantly killed his samurai friend as a kind of atonement... but the studio presumably hadn’t counted on the success of that first movie because, within that same year, this sequel was already released into the world. Therefore, that last little bit is not referred to again in this story and, right from the outset Zatoichi has a, presumably, new cane sword to defend himself with (a fact I seem to remember may get contradicted later in the series... but I’ll let you know when I get there).

This story is, in some ways, a continuation of the first but, really, only in terms of details such as locations and recurring characters. The first half of the film is set in a different town and this movie really is the first to set up the idea that Zatoichi is a wandering masseur. In The Tale Of Zatoichi (reviewed here...) he did indulge his new samurai friend in this but, in this movie, he is clearly taking money for his services... and that part of his established character is now a constant throughout the series, as much as his blindness, his gambling hustles and his expert swordsmanship.

The atmosphere is slightly different from the start in that the soundtrack is not composed by Akira Ifikube, like the first and a fair number of the others in the series are, but by Ichirô Saitô, who also contributed to later films, plus some of the Sleepy Eyes Of Death series (many of which are also reviewed on this site). It’s a different vibe but I think I almost prefer it over the Ifikube and I’m glad both composers got to do work on this franchise.

The film has less to do than the first one in terms of the set up of the character and gets on with the story. Also, in this regard, in terms of having more action sequences placed at key points through the narrative and building towards a final, “all against one showdown”, for the end part of the film... or in this case, not quite the end. I’ll get to that a little later, though.

Curiously, the style used by the previous director, of keeping the camera close to the actors and following them around, is eschewed in favour of more master shots from a distance. There is still camera movement but this is obviously slower as the shots can, for the most part, take in wider parts of the environment the characters are cohabiting. This also, and I’d never thought about this properly before I rewatched this in comparison with the first movie, gives the film a more voyeuristic feel... you are watching the action from a distance and judging it, rather than being in the thick of it and reacting with the characters on screen. That’s kind of an interesting trick to use to change the pacing of a movie and the way it is perceived, I suspect. So in this film, the dynamics of the shot are created purely by the movements of the actors and the way they fill the space in the general composition of the shots... as opposed to the somewhat visceral but different approach of the first.

Another thing is that the compositions are not all based on verticals as the first one was. The film begins with Zatoichi being a ”blind” witness to something a gang doesn’t want generally known. As the gang try to kill him, they learn that he is going to the location of the first film, to pay his respects to the samurai he killed one year earlier. They team up with the boss who has survived Zatoichi’s intervention in the last movie and, by the time Zatoichi gets to the previous films location, in the second half of what is actually quite a short movie... that’s when we start to see some of the vertical style compositions revisited. These are often used to show the separation of attitudes or classes of characters split within the same physical frame... which is a good way to do it.

There are some really cool shot designs and elements of beauty like this found throughout the film. Such as a beach fight where the incoming tide gently laps at Zatoichi’s feet as he takes on a series of opponents... most of whom run when they figure out our hero’s prowess with a sword. And the vertical jutting objects motif is played out in the final big battle where all of the characters are dwarfed by the foreground details and seem almost like ants against this forced perspective. Very nice.

There’s also some great little moments where the writers build on Zatoichi’s character traits as the series starts progressing. For example, a man who sneaks up on Zatoichi to kill him has his thunder stolen when Zatoichi asks him the time... just as he is about to strike a death blow. Realising his blind opponent knows exactly where he is and could kill him in a snap, the man backs down and engages in conversation instead. This not only shows Zatoichi’s abilities well but also his compassion... he could have just cut the man down where he was standing but, instead, fashioned an excuse for the man so his would-be killer would not lose face and not have to engage him.

There’s also a brilliant piece of what people these days would call stunt casting. The plot also involves an outlaw on the run from the authorities who also wants to kill Zatoichi for some, at first, unspecified reason. He is embroiled in Zatoichi’s past somehow and the two were once rivals for the love of Zatoichi’s life. I thought the guy looked very familiar when he came on and the role turns out to be played by Tomisaburô Wakayama (credited in the film under the pseudonym of Jo Kenzaburo). You may remember him more for the role he perfected 10 years later, as the infamous Ogami Itto, the lead protagonist in the Lone Wolf And Cub (aka Baby Cart) films. In a twist moment in this movie (don’t read further than this if you don’t want to know) he plays Zatoichi’s long embittered brother... which is not so much of a stretch as it happens because, in real life, he really was Shintarô Katsu’s brother and, when you see him this young and with his hair significantly different, the resemblance between the two of them is much easier to see.

Wakayama’s character, Nagisa no Yoshiro, actually wounds Zatoichi quite badly during the end sequences of the film... one of the few times this happens this badly to the main character of this series (although there is a quite spectacular Django tribute in one of the later films, if memory serves me correctly... I’ll get to it when I rewatch). The battle between Zatoichi and various opponents near the end sees the start of the “overwhelming odds” battles that mark both this and the Baby Cart series of films. Zatoichi’s body count in this final battle is around 15 on-screen kills, which is quite modest for him... but this is where this kind of battle spectacle really starts in this series of films, I think.

The end of the film is abrupt and leaves a few loose ends. After he finds his romantic interest from the first film is going to be getting married to someone we are on edge, wondering what will happen to the two of them. Will they get together? The question is never answered because the next battle scene gives us a very abrupt ending which finishes just before the battle properly starts. A very angry Zatoichi, for reasons I won’t reveal here, is surrounded by a bunch of men including the boss who he didn’t kill in the first movie. However, he has made up his mind now that this man must die. He lunges ostentatiously at the opponent, he might have sliced him or he may not but, knowing Zatoichi like we now do, it’s pretty much inevitable that every other man in this confrontation is going to lose their life. It is, however, a confrontation we never see...

The film abruptly cuts there, leaving the battle to play out in our imagination... not to mention leaving a few loose ends too. It’s both a powerful ending and a let down at the same time. We really want to see Zatoichi in action again but, honestly, the fury we imagine for ourselves is surely greater than anything the director could have captured on celluloid here. As I watched it, I was reminded of a movie I’d recently seen at the cinema... a little thing called The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (reviewed here). If you remember the ending of that movie, you’ll realise that this is exactly the same tactic that the director of that one has employed as we have here in this one. In The Amazing Spider-Man 2, we see Spidey throw the first punch (well, metaphorically) at the Rhino, the credits roll and we play out in our minds the rest of the battle. We know Spider-Man’s going to win... it’s moot. It’s purely used to give a dramatic punchline to the film and I suspect the ending of The Tale Of Zatoichi Continues involved a similar creative decision. Whatever.  For the Zatoichi movie at least... it kinda works.

This would be Zatoichi’s last black and white film... his popularity pushing him into colour stock from his third feature. As always with the Zatoichi movies, or most of them, this one is a definite recommend but I would add the caveat that you should probably check out the first movie before sitting down with this one... since this particular entry in the series is very closely linked to it and makes references to the first which you would want to know about when you are watching. Another great Zatoichi film and, once again, Criterion’s new blu ray transfer is the absolute best way to watch this other than seeing an actual print in a good cinema. Another good entry in the chanbara genre, I think.

The Blind Menace

The Phantom Blind

The Blind Menace
1960 Japan
Directed by Kazuo Mori
Anime Eigo DVD Region 1

Two years before the big screen incarnation of the Zatoichi character started in a franchise that would last, in various forms, to this day, there was Suginoichi, The Blind Menace. A young actor who’s star was rising a little less speedily than you might, in hindsight, have imagined, took on the role of Suginoichi, a blind masseur who schemes and cleverly manipulates those around him as a skilled hero might... except that he is anything but a hero and his machinations lead him through the paths of theft, extortion, blackmail, rape and murder.

Starting with a number of scenes depicting Suginoichi and his best friend in childhood, the character grows up on a fairly astute transition shot (for the time) and turns into the young actor I mentioned... the not quite yet, but soon to be legendary... Shintarô Katsu.

Katsu, of course, is the man who played Zatoichi for the first 26 of the movies and 100 episodes, too, of the Zatoichi TV show (wish AnimeEigo would release series’ 2 - 4 now). Here is a film role which he throws himself into with relish, studying blind people and utilising that in a performance which is ulitimately very similar to the Zatoichi role he perfected two years later. A kind of cross between a comic, pantomime, almost slapstick, blind man... and with the inner workings betraying a more serious side. In the Zatoichi films that serious side manifests as a warm heart, astonishing hearing and his skill with his sword cane. Here the warm heart is absent and, where that would later develop in Zatoichi, here Suginoichi’s interior is all animal cunning and, again, great skill... not with a sword cane but with his ability to see how any situation can be worked for his own advantage.

Katsu, of course, does this really well and the film was enough of a hit that it inspired the more heroic slant on the character and the Zatoichi series became, of course, popular box office gold, owing no small debt to the lead performer’s lovable and dominating (yet humble) personality, which made him a greater known name in Japan than various iconic Japanese actors who are more famous in the West - the likes of Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura and Tatsuya Nakadai, for example (three personal favourites, although Katsu’s performances are infectious but, I plan on rewatching and reviewing the entire Zatoichi series next year so... I’ll leave all that until then).

The film is directed by Kazuo Mori, himself a director who would become an old hand on the Zatoichi series of films and, right from the start, with his long tracking sequences and ability to stay with a character in a continuous, fluid shot rather than chop everything into smaller sections, he pulls you in with the way he captures details and the expressions of the performers. The camerawork is typical of this director and this kind of film and it gives an almost voyeuristic feel to it on some level, as things are revealed to the audience which suddenly reveal something more about the clever treachery of the character as he spins his little webs. The character Katsu is playing here is certainly no lovable rogue and his actions are without remorse and unconscionable. He plays the part so well and I was impressed but wonder a little how this performance catapulted him into the other side of the coin with the Zatoichi character. I know I’m bringing with me the baggage of seeing him play the Zatoichi character around about fifty times but audiences at the time didn’t have that luggage to carry with them.

Well, anyway, however it happened, it certainly might not have occurred without the preparatory groundwork Katsu did here with this character... so this is quite an important movie.

Fans of chambera might not neccessarily be drawn to this movie. Certainly, it’s not an action picture and has none of the poetic choreography of violence that, say, a Sleepy Eyes Of Death movie might have. Nor does it allign itself with the brutal, naturalistic view of a Kurosawa period piece either. What it does have, however, is a group of very good actors, the almost but not quite over-the-top personality of Shintarô Katsu and a fiendish dose of high cynicism running through the picture like a tainted vein. This is the kind of character that Zatoichi might have been when he was a young yakuza but it’s much harder to imagine Ichi as a ruthless plotter who takes no prisoners... however, when Katsu puts his mind to it, nothing seems unbelievable for too long... with such a talented individual committed to making you believe in him.

And that’s about it on The Blind Menace, I think. For some reason, although I liked the movie a lot, I am struggling to pinpoint exactly why. Perhaps it’s the near perfect tone achieved in the film that I found so arreeable but, whatever it is, it’s certainly got a strong recomendation from me. If you’re a fan of Katsu and especially his role in the Zatoichi movies, then you really owe it to yourself to check this one out. If you’re not familiar with the great man’s works then this is a fine first in the world of the blind masseur, a role which Katsu would cherish and perfect for almost three decades. This is where it begins...